There are a lot of ways to make art with endless materials not always found in the art store. It's healthy to see what other artists use for materials, but make sure that they are archival enough to stand the test of time. You may be making masterpieces, so don't shoot yourself in the foot!
Masterpieces Made With House Paint
New York Times
By Douglas Quenqua
Published: February 18, 2013
Scientists using a high-energy X-ray instrument say they
have solved the long-running debate over what kind of paint Picasso used in his
masterpieces.
It was common house paint, said Volker Rose, a physicist at
the Argonne National Laboratory who led the study, published in Applied Physics
A: Materials Science & Processing.
“We were looking into pigments taken from Picasso’s white
paint, which from a material perspective is zinc oxide, and we were able to
study the impurities that are there,” Dr. Rose said.
The scientists also bought samples of decades-old house
paint on eBay. After comparing those samples with Picasso’s paint, they
determined that the two shared the same chemical makeup.
The instrument was a hard X-ray nanoprobe, developed by the
Department of Energy to give scientists a close-up view of the chemical
elements in physical materials. Its intended use is to improve the production
of high-performance materials and energies. Using the nanoprobe, the
researchers could view particles of paint that were just 30 nanometers wide. (A
typical sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick.)
In his regular work, Dr. Volker uses the nanoprobe to study
zinc oxide, a key ingredient in batteries, energy-saving windows and
liquid-crystal displays for computers and television. Because zinc oxide exists
in white paint as well, it made a valuable clue for the physicist to learn
about Picasso’s paint.
Some art historians have long held that Picasso was among
the first major artists to switch from traditional artists’ paint to house
paint, which is more affordable and creates a glossy image without brush
strokes.
