Marion’s smile says it all. Why? Because the paint she uses, relieves her of so many of the hassles that beset painters, of traditional oils and acrylics.
 
Although a lot like oils, Genesis Heatset doesn’t come in tubes, which of itself had tended to put some artists off having a go. In the pots it’s pretty solid stuff, sparking a first impression that it needs thinning with solvent. Which she urges, is wrong. You pick it out with a spatula, knead it on your palette and it softens. The more you knead it, the softer it gets, till it reaches the consistency you’re used to working with. Of itself, it never dries, so you just keep working, till you reach a stage where you need it to dry. And that’s achieved very simply with a few minutes judicious use of an ordinary heat gun.
Marion uses a piece of glass as her palette, housing it in a translucent plastic A4 document file as pictured left. The beauty of it being that there’s no need to clean it or even cover it with cling-wrap. Remember, the paint won’t dry till you tell it to. And for the same reason, the brushes don’t need cleaning either. But if you really feel the need to clean them, then ordinary kitchen detergent will do the job.
A rural setting was her subject for today’s demo, the bones of which she’d lightly penciled onto a piece of canvas and taped to a stretched canvas as seen at right. The paint nicely buttery on the palette, she flicked a bit off and with staccato vigor, worked energetically down through the sky, progressively mixing and blocking those several other mixes, bringing the whole forward, to reveal this already colourful foretaste of things to come.
By this time Marion had highlighted so many of the delightful attributes of the heat-set process, such as: -
- It’s non-toxic, odour free and non-flammable.
- It dries only when you want it to and unless heated, it doesn’t dry on palette or brushes.
- There are 89 brilliant light-fast colours in the colour chart and they dry true to colour.
- It blends easily and even the mixed leftovers can be stored for use in later paintings. Hence, there’s virtually no wasted pigment.
- Cleanup; hands with soap and water; glass palette if you must, with spatula or palette knife and window cleaner or (say) metho to wipe it clean;
On clothes, as long as it’s still wet, wash it as you would normally.
- It’s supported with a good range of mediums.
- There’s no real no need for caps on pots, which can ease finding the colour you want.
It was at this point too that she needed to set the paint before proceeding further. Never aim the gun downwards. Always work horizontally as seen at right. Use an even back and forth motion, working from top down … that is if you want to dry it all. Otherwise just heat the bits you want to dry. Hold the gun not too close, yet not too far away. NEVER pause the gun in any one spot. Just a little practice and you’ll be fine. Ordinarily most paintings take only a couple of minutes to dry, depending on thickness of application. Marion had used very little medium up till this stage, urging that this first coat tends to be a bit drier anyway, than later coats. She works in layers mostly, but points out that while it is possible to keep painting till it’s finished, the heating time will vary across the painting, due to difference in thickness as well as wetness of pigment.
Interestingly, another colour chart that she handed out, shows how to save by creating 30 popular colours using just five of their high quality, fade-resistant Genesis colours. Genesis Yellow, Genesis Red, Ultramarine, Burnt Umber and Titanium White, so you don’t need to go out and buy all 89 colours. And being in pots, you get to use every very last bit of pigment, which is pretty hard to do with tube paints.
Marion assures us that it can be worked over acrylics but not over oils. It works fine on stretched canvas, sheet canvas and pad canvas, but not on canvas stuck to board. And using extra brushes for extra colours, helps save paint by not having to wipe paint between colours if you are using only one brush. It gets better too, drying true to colour, they are so easy to match.
Mixing and blending colours happens for Marion with the seeming ease and speed of a touch typist, just as does her delicacy of touch in the fiddliest of details. Mostly she works the paint at pot/jar consistency, with sparing, if any, use of odourless solvent, using bristle brushes at first, and tending more to nylon brushes for the finest of details.
In reply to a question from the floor she advised that for competition and exhibition purposes Genesis Heatset is accepted as oil paint. And just about then she said, “I’m puddling” and decided that it is finished.
To an earlier question about stripping the masking tape from the painting, she urged that it is best done at the end while it is still hot after the last heating.
Thanks Marion for this delightful and revealing demonstration, as well as for introducing us to such a refreshingly new medium.
- Neal Hicking.
By the way, we need to be mindful that Marion is not a representative of Genesis Oils and that in doing this, she simply enjoys sharing it with others.
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