I have almost finished an oil painting of a club scene. I have couples dancing to music and people sitting at tables watching. How do I make the dance floor look shiny. My inclination is to paint a glaze of 2 parts turps and 1 part stand linseed oil over the painting and then paint in reflections while glaze is wet. Any advice would be welcome as my expertise in this regard is limited.
Hi Peter,
You could paint in the reflections that way but the paint will ‘behave’ in a certain way as opposed to working into a dry layer. When you paint into a wet glaze it will be slippery so the paint will not take to the surface as well. Still possible but the paint will need to be thinned as well, really wet so you almost float it into the glaze. That is a bit tough to do without some experience at it.
However why would you want to do it that way?
The biggest advantage of oil paint is its long drying time. I will often paint a layer working into a dry layer and if I don’t like it I can simply wipe it back off without disturbing previous work.
It does not matter what you are painting it is always a matter of controlling value, edges and for color- temperature, saturation, hue etc. But VALUE is key. If the values are right and even if colors are off a little it will still look fine.
Get that right and the floor will look shiny. The reflections will generally be toward the middle values. The lights will be darker than the lights they are reflecting and the darks will be lighter than those same darks they are a reflection of.