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Zest-it Ability
Zest-it Brush Cleaner |
Zest-it Parchment Blend
| Zest-it Pencil Blend
Zest-it Clear Painting Medium | Zest-it Damar Varnish | Zest-it Hand
Cleaner
Clear Painting Medium
The
Zest-it Clear Painting Medium was designed to facilitate the flow of oil
paint. Because some oil paint can be quite ‘stiff’ and not easy to use
straight on the brush, some type of vehicle is needed to help with the
flow of the paint. If you enjoy painting wet-on-wet then it especially
important to have the background wet to start. So the Zest-it Clear
Painting Medium can be of assistance to both the traditional oil painter
and the wet-on-wet artist.
It can also be helpful to Oil pastel artists.
For
the Traditional oil painter, the Zest-it Clear Painting Medium is very
useful for applying glazes at the end of a painting. It dried clear and
quite quickly, it will also lift any dull parts of a painting giving an
overall balance to the surface finish. It does not contain any varnish
as some painting medium do; this keeps the dried glaze as a more
flexible film and in keeping with the rest of the paintings structure.
For the Wet-on-Wet painter, the Zest-it Clear Painting Medium gives an
ideal base for the start of a painting, allowing the artists to mix and
blend colours on the canvas. The medium will stay workable for about
twelve hours, giving the artist ample time to complete the painting in
one sitting. The Zest-it Clear Painting Medium can also be coloured
before starting a wet-on-wet painting, just add a small amount of oil
paint to an amount of the medium and mix together before using to wet
the background.
For
Oil Pastel artists who want to blend the pastel to more of a ‘smooth’
and/or permanent finish then the Zest-it Clear Painting Medium can be
very helpful. I’ve carried out numerous experiments with oil pastels and
the medium and found that the Clear Painting Medium actually causes the
oil pastel to have a finish more in keeping with an oil painting, in as
much as, the finished oil pastel painting is not re-workable weeks or
months later as it would be normally. So a more permanent finish is
given to oil pastel work, but if too much medium is used then the
‘pastel look’ is lost, also I found it more successful when using the
oil pastels on a non-flexible surface. As with most things in painting
it’s all about balance.
For
Paint stick and oil bar users the Zest-it Clear Painting Medium has uses
similar to those of the oil paint and oil pastel user. It makes an
excellent vehicle for moving ‘Markal’ paint sticks, for blending and
thinning. It opens the paint sticks and bars up to extra styles of use
and gives a very good finish when using them as you would oil paint.
N.B. With opening of this website I have 25ml samples of the Zest-it Clear Painting Medium to give away to the first 10 Oil Pastel artists who would like to try it and the first 10 Markal paint stick artists who would like to try it. All I ask in return is feedback on their finding of using the Clear Painting