Painters' patience...

As an "old master", one would have had to be extra patient to find out if one's masterpiece really was one!Peter Paul Rubens, "Head of young boy"

The preparations that went into the creation of those luminous, detailed, fine tuned, huge oil paintings were myriad. And they were invented if you may call it that, by Dutch/Flemish painters like Breughel..

Recipe :-)! for success follows:

First: prepare rabbit glue (did they kill and skin it, then dry the skin, then chop it, then boil it to get the glue - or was there already a shortcut?)

Second: prepare the pigments/colors.. grind the minerals with mortar and pestle and store in bottles

Third: prepare gesso with which to prepare the boards, canvas, etc.

Forth: draw the outlines in charcoal, then fix the outlines so as not to smudge them.

Fifth: apply first layer of color.

Sixth: let it dry - for weeks or longer.

Seventh: apply next layer of paint.. and so on and so forth.

And finally fix it to preserve the colors, preserve the whole piece!

AND of course, the MOST IMPORTANT ONES , Talent and THE ideas!

If I forgot a step or two... visit MFAH and just ask a docent to clarify the process...I did!

And all that ONLY by daylight, maybe the grinding could be done by candle light! And on dreary dark days, we may guess the master rested ;-D!

Now you know ;-) why there are so many oils under "School of..", "Attributed to.." .

One person alone :-)..methinks, could NOT paint all those when each piece required such length of time to prepare for, execute and patiently wait in between layers...but the achievement WAS worth it.

The luminosity, the patina, the colors, the skin tones, etc.

and of course the subject (for some viewers )

all make it a masterpiece even if it is ONLY "School of" or "Attributed to"

More modern painters still prepare the canvas or boards, but the paints are available already prepared.

And some paints, especially acrylics, dry much faster, allowing a increase in artful outputs :-)!.

And then there are Thai elephants who paint, but I doubt they spend much time prepping their canvas and paints ;-D!

Elephants also live long lives and have LOOONG memories, or so they say!

Which might not apply to some old and/or modern masters :-)!