Artisan Paint Cracking

HI ,

I have used Artisan Oils for about 3 years and have recently found some areas in my paintings have cracked after the painting has fully dried. I paint wet on wet and don't use any mediums to thin or thicken. Having read more about Artisan it seems that some of the colours have different drying times, how do you work out how much fast drying medium to add to the slower drying colours to prevent the paint cracking when it's painte on top of a faster drying colour?
Any tips would be great , thanks Rosanne

Hi Rosanne
Welcome to the forum. All Traditional and regular oils have different drying times, but usually are not a problem if painted all in one setting (alla prima). Are the cracks in areas where the paint was thick?

I have had one painting crack, but it was where I had applied the paint much thicker than any place else. I had also used a small amount of fast drying medium to it since it was so thick, but that was probably the mistake I made.

I don't think you would want to use fast drying medium in some paints and not others if you are painting wet on wet. I would think that it would increase the amount of cracking. I don't usually paint alla prima, but perhaps others in the forum have more experience at that than I and can answer you better.

I will be moving this discussion to the "Painting Discussion" forum under "Water Soluble Oils" so it will be more easily found from searching.

Thanks, the cracks are where is applied the paint very thick straight from the tube, some colours seem to be fine when applied this way whilst the white and burnt umber Artisan range cracks.

I don't use Artisan paints so can't help you with them but I did want to welcome you to the board! Hope you'll post your paintings for us to see soon.