
Paint Is Colored Glue - pshaw
https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?3820
======
Syzygies
Labor has become more expensive than parts, for many aspects of home repair.
We haven't adapted our habits to this.

The last time I let my university landlord paint my apartment, it took days to
clear the furniture, and I was instructed to do no paint prep. There were
peels coming down from the ceiling. The painters exploited this "paint is
glue" theory by painting under the peels and pushing them flat. I channeled my
desire to kill them on the spot by politely escorted them out in mid-job and
never letting anyone paint for me again.

The next time I painted this apartment, I stripped the ceiling bare of its
many poorly applied layers, and applied $500 of artist-grade acrylic primer
and titanium white paint to the ceiling and walls. 15 years later, the
apartment looks just-painted. Artist-grade acrylic paint is one of the best
glues available, much more reliably so than oil paint.

In the years since, the best wall paints have come closer to artist-grade
acrylic paints, and their glues are likely better tuned to typical conditions.
Artist paint is more expensive and better. Carefully tuning a cheap glue is
like botching an airplane hardware design and trying to fix it in software.

Later in a home, filling holes in contractor botched cabinet work, I started
with artist-grade acrylic modeling putty, added just enough dye from the
commercial paint manufacturer to match the existing cabinet paint, tweaked the
gloss to also match, and created a one-step wood fill that disappeared into
the existing paint job when dry. Much less shrinkage than commercial wood
fills, and no primer or repainting needed. Again, acrylic art supplies making
the best glue.

~~~
crazygringo
> _15 years later, the apartment looks just-painted_

Curious what you mean?

In my experience, new paint coats are needed because of marks left on walls --
accumulated smudges, scuffs, furniture bangs, nicks, filled anchor holes, etc.
None of which higher-quality paint has anything to do with... I assume?

Am I wrong? Assuming paint is applied correctly in the first place, what are
the longevity benefits of using a higher-quality paint?

~~~
rhinoceraptor
A lot of scuffs and smudges can be cleaned off with a magic eraser and some
elbow grease. It's certainly easier than re-painting.

~~~
dilyevsky
Depends on paint sheen (try doing that with flat finish paint - just gonna
smear it all over)

------
lqet
I remember being quite blown away as a 20 year old during a trip to Paris by
some of the paintings in the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. I had known many of
these paintings before, from Wikipedia and school books, but it seems to be
impossible to capture the effect of an oil painting in a digital or reproduced
image, because, as the article describes, an oil painting is essentially
3-dimensional.

(I also distinctly remember being shocked by the size of some paintings,
especially the crowning of Napoleon
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Napoleon_I#/medi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Napoleon_I#/media/File:Jacques-
Louis_David_-_The_Coronation_of_Napoleon_\(1805-1807\).jpg)) This painting was
printed in many of my history school books, but I was not even remotely aware
that is nearly 10 meters wide.)

~~~
jdietrich
I can highly recommend John Berger's legendary documentary series _Ways Of
Seeing_. The first episode explores precisely this issue - how our perception
of painting is affected by reproduction. It has perhaps the most arresting
opening scene of any documentary series.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk)

~~~
beat
My favorite painting in the world is Jackson Pollock's _Mural_ , his first
major painting. It's owned by my alma mater the U of Iowa. The canvas is 9x20
iirc, just huge. They used to display it in a large central gallery, where you
could look at it from more than 50 feet away, or get your nose right up to it.

One of the great things about this painting is how it is a totally different
experience at different distances. From a distance, the sense of right-to-left
motion is palpable. Get closer, and figures seem to pop out of it. But really
close, you can no longer see the entire painting, but you can see individual
brushstrokes (mostly 3-6" house painting brushes, I think). The subtlety and
detail of each stroke is extraordinary. There are patterns across the canvas
that are a result of large-scale patterns of strokes - it's almost like
cursive handwriting.

~~~
bunderbunder
Another of my favorite examples of the "reproduction doesn't do any justice"
is Mark Rothko. Like Pollock, he's often held up as example of an artist whose
work "doesn't look like anything" and "my kid could do that." And it's true,
if you're looking at a poster of a Rothko, it just looks like some large
splotches of color.

But, in a gallery, people encounter the Rothko and just stop. Many of them
will stare at those large splotches of color for 1, 2, 5, even 10 minutes.
Turns out there's a whole lot going on there that just doesn't translate into
print.

Sadly, a lot of the techniques that abstract expressionists used don't
translate well into the future, either. Layering just oil paint, that's pretty
durable. Layering different kinds of paint, not so much. I've seen a fly
dislodge a flake of paint from one of Rothko's paintings just by landing on
it.

~~~
largolagrande
You might be interested by this video about the challenges faced by
conservation scientists with Rothko murals :
[https://vimeo.com/111469325](https://vimeo.com/111469325)

------
qubex
I run a paint production company here in Italy (decorative for
interior/exterior house use, and various kinds of high-grade industrial
coatings) so this article (not to mention the fact that it somehow climbed it
was to the top of the front page) amuses me no end.

I've forwarded it to all of my colleagues and they'll all in stitches too.
Because basically deep down we know this is the most succinct and relatable
description of what we do with our lives. Try as we might to aggrandise
things, this is the truth stripped bare.

Unvarnished truth, even. ;)

~~~
amarte
This article is really interesting and I love the insight provided about
pigment layering to achieve remarkable effects, however I think what the title
says is totally wrong.

Paints are technically coatings and comprise a large and diverse industry of
products for wide-ranging applications. Wall paint is very different than
artist paint, which is very different than car paint, which is very different
than the type of paint you might apply to pipes to prevent corrosion, etc..

Glue is an adhesive, and while the resins used to make adhesives may sometimes
be the same resins used to make coatings (Gorilla glue is epoxy-based, and
many floor coatings you walk over all day and never think about are epoxy-
based as well), the actual products being used -- the can of paint or the
stick of glue you buy at the store -- are formulated with resins, pigments,
additives, binders, chain-extenders, fillers etc etc, that are specific to the
product's unique application.

So basically, paint is not glue. Paints are coatings and glues are adhesives.
Sure, paints have to adhere to their substrates, and adhesives must adhere to
their sometimes very different substrates as well, but paint and glue are
really totally different things. You could say that coatings and adhesives are
both formulated polymeric systems, but you miss out on a lot of interesting
subtlety that entire industries are based on when you say "paint is glue."

------
mauvehaus
Paint, as understood by oil painters and artists, sounds like a slightly
different animal than paint as understood by house painters, wood finishers,
and other sorts of people with more prosaic requirements of their paints.

Bob Flexner wrote a book for wood finishers, Understanding Wood Finishing,
that breaks down oil paint in simple terms for the rest of us:

Some oils (like linseed and walnut) are drying oils, and can be used as a
finish on their own, but don't really form a hard film finish.

For that you need a varnish, which is an oil cooked with a resin.

Paint is a varnish with a pigment added.

That's different from an oil mixed with a pigment mentioned in the article,
which is probably fundamentally similar to a straight oil in terms of its
properties. Maybe somebody who paints with oil paints can weigh in?

His columns in Popular Woodworking and other woodworking magazines are worth a
read, as is his book, if you're interested in understanding what you're really
working with.

Tying this all back to the article, I'd disagree with the claim that paint is
"colored glue". One typically doesn't glue things together with paint, though
that is a sometimes unintended consequence of putting something on top of
something else with an incompletely cured layer of finish. You certainly
couldn't use e.g. linseed oil as a glue in a joint where oxygen isn't getting
in readily like a mortise and tenon joint.

A discussion of oil vs varnish here:

[https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/finishing/oil-...](https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/finishing/oil-
finishes-their-history-and-use/)

~~~
frontloadpro
The Chem Engineer finds terms like Resin, useless.

It's kind of like saying, tape.

Which tape? Easy peel? Or duct tape?

I imagine that this is possible because there is only one type of resin that's
useful in this field. Or trade secrets...

~~~
blattimwind
There are many different types of bases ("resins") many of which are
incompatible which each other, and can neither be mixed nor painted over. E.g.
even acrylic lacquers, you can make them as a dispersion (i.e. water based) or
using a solvent. Different paints. Not compatible. Both are "acrylic".

------
mxfh
"The effect of layering is so powerful that it has transcended its roots in
painting with oils and is now in­corporated into all professional digital
illustration tools. If you use Photoshop, or Illustrator, or any other
computer graphics tools, you'll be making images in layers."

The layering described there, is more about what blend modes are for, layering
can also be quite dumb by itself. The roots of DTP software layers lie pretty
much all in the necessities of print, not painting, where you have to have a
layer per color anyway.

Wondering why the article stops short of the point, why (digital) reproduction
of paintings is a lossy process in general, and especially for archiving.
Total Appearance Capture systems exist but are rarely applied to paintings. A
2D-RGB raster can only represent the appearance of a light reflective object
from a single angle und very specific ambient conditions. How a painting
interacts with light in a room is a complex process of all kinds of optical
phenomena (reflection, absorbtion, diffraction, refraction ...) as described
in the arcticle.

------
H1Supreme
The technique described as "They overlaid many thin layers of oil paint" is
technically called glazing. And, by "thin" layers, they mean a layer that is
mostly oil, with varying levels of pigment.

Many of the old masters would paint a detailed, monochromatic underpainting,
and glaze many layers of color on top of it. Definitely not a process used by
people who want to finish quickly.

~~~
gknoy
That's interesting, it's very similar to the way many comics are done -- one
person does the drawing and inking, and it's often colored by a different
person (or at least as a different process if the team is small).

------
k__
That's why you can "glue" wallpaper on the wall with paint.

Rather helpful knowledge, when you just want to put a small piece over a
blemish on the wall.

------
jrochkind1
> Linseed oil is also used for many applications beyond oil paint, such as
> treating wood, to create a transparent, protective plastic barrier -- just
> as oil paint does, but this time, without color.

Or for seasoning cast iron!
[https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-
ultimate-w...](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-ultimate-way-
to-season-cast-iron)

~~~
skj
Before anyone runs with your suggestion, it's worth pointing out that flaxseed
is what people can use (which is a food-grade equivalent to linseed).

And then before anyone runs with _that_ suggestion, it's actually not a great
way to season cast iron - it turns brittle and the seasoning will chip away
(experienced this myself, and then did research).

A great place to start for seasoning cast iron is on reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5rhq9n/the_rcasti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5rhq9n/the_rcastiron_faq_start_here/)

~~~
jrochkind1
The flaxseed oil method has worked great for me so far. But it is indeed a
great internet debate. :)

------
mwexler
This extract is from Delancey Place, which sends a daily email with a para or
two from a fascinating book. I am rarely disappointed with their choices.
Affilitate link to buy book is at bottom of email, but they seem to invest far
more heart in this effort than the revenue would support. Sometimes, curated
discovery is just what you need in a rushed morning. Very recommended.

------
Daub
One point the article missed is the relationship between Canvas, primer,
medium and oil paint. All three are traditionally derived from the same plant:
flax. For this reason, there is great chemical compatibility between them,
which accounts for their longevity.

Even longer lasting is Buon fresco (the earliest form of fresco). This is
essentially pigment painted into wet plaster. The paint is not a glue, rather
a stain. Effectively the support and the paint are one.

Another interesting point is the difference between how light paint is applied
to dark. Light paint is usually painted quite thickly, and for this reason is
very good at reflecting light. This improves the upper registers of the
painting. The last thing you want dark paint to do is reflect light. Thickly
applied black paint takes on a very 'flat' look. An experienced oil painter
would apply black paint as a very thin and 'dry' layer (dry = no or little
medium). They are also likely to employ an underpainting layer of brown-red.
Applied in this manner the darks have a profound depth. The end result is a
profoundly wide dynamic range.

------
pmoriarty
Dough is edible glue.

~~~
twic
All glue is dough if you're brave enough.

------
IshKebab
Interesting. I wish they hadn't thrown in this nonsense though:

> It's exactly the intricate expressiveness of oil paint that made Renaissance
> art so sensual and passionate

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kowdermeister
Is there a hidden analogy to programming that I missed? :)

~~~
inopinatus
Yes. [http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)

~~~
kowdermeister
Thanks for the link instead of a downvote, never seen this post.

~~~
dictum
I didn't downvote, but your comment comes across as dismissive of the subject
because it isn't directly related to digital tech.

~~~
stevehawk
To clarify, the smiley makes condescending.

~~~
kowdermeister
Really? It was not the intention. I just found it odd to be on the top of HN,
so I assumed it to have a deeper meaning which I still find funny.

~~~
stevehawk
I know, it's the burden of text.

------
nakedrobot2
No it's not, as the author says in the _3rd sentence_ of the article.
Watercolor paint is not an adhesive in any sense of the word. And there are
plenty of paints which also dry, leaving a powder behind that can easily rub
off.

So yeah, some paint is glue, some is not.

~~~
lqet
At least the abstract is more precise:

> The secret of _oil_ paint, as mastered by our greatest artists

Nevertheless, an interesting read.

~~~
mrob
The 4th sentence is about watercolor paint:

>Watercolor paint does it by drying, releasing water into the air through
evaporation and leaving only the pigments on the page.

This is not glue.

~~~
stan_rogers
The binder, gum arabic, _is_. There's just not much of it.

