But here’s a tip. Well, two tips. One is, you’ll get a faster-drying thinner if you mix your nice linseed oil with some turpentine. The other is, if you do this, you will get what we call a “lean” mixture of paint and medium (the mixing substance is called “medium”). It’ll be “lean” compared to “fat” paint – plain paint out of the tube, unmixed with anything that makes it more liquid.
So the tip is this: when painting, you never want to paint lean over fat. You want to paint fat over lean. The reason is that the lean layers will dry faster, being thinner. If a layer of thinned paint dries on top of a layer of unthinned paint, it will be completely dry and cohered to itself, making a skin, before the fatter layer under it has had a chance to
dry. So when that does dry completely, it will condense into a smaller volume under the already-dry upper layer, which will then
crrrrr a ck.
You’ve seen this.
It’s okay if you want it to happen. But if you don’t, then remind yourself: fat over lean.
phew that was fun