After having worked many years as an oil painter started in 1990 and utilizing many many of the world class oil, paint manufacturers globally, I could not develop the type of luminosity and depth in my oil painting that you can see in paintings created by Leonardo da Vinci and Vermeer. Many customers and art enthusiast asked me. Why do you keep switching brands of oil paint? They went on to say most artist settle on a given brand and then go from their painting into the sunset or however, far their career can go. This is true in my case it related to the art I had seen growing up in the Toledo Museum of art in Toledo, Ohio, and those Renaissance era oil paintings are far superior to the oil paintings created by artist today. Most of our current day artists do not understand light color and how to optimize in what makes oil painting so superior to any other medium. Ironically, Leonardo da Vinci was able to create a fire superior finished oil painting through his utilization of transparent oils, not opaque and ironically, even though he used lead white, he had two different forms and they were not opaque. Those that you can purchase in modern time now are tremendously opaque and will stop light transmission and also reduce luminosity. Ironically, Leonardo also realized the use of canvas in oil paintings, would not create the type of surface to maximize light transmission because of the surface texture. If you study light, you know immediately any surface roughness of any kind causes the light to reflect immediately back out and not go into the multiple layers underneath. So what did he do? He immediately shifted gears and went to using walnut wood and Poplar wood in both the Salvador Mundi and Mona Lisa, and all the other paintings and ironically those two paintings after 500+ years are gorgeous at this time. So many of the so-called senior oil painters in America making a lot of money are not even listening or following his great example and continuously paint on canvas, and that is a done deal eventually will deteriorate and go away even being curated in a good museum it will not last. So I had great wisdom and understanding a long time ago, but it seems that our modern oil painters are not interested in the science and the tremendous ability utilizing natural Earth Pigments and also adding additional particles to enhance and magnify the luminosity of their oil painting.

In this particular painting of a wood duck drake is my 2025 Wisconsin waterfall duck stamp entry. No, I did not win an acrylic artist took the honors of first place, however in review our art critics, and or those that are judging original artwork in our wildlife competitions, have seemed to lost their real artistic eye when evaluating the different mediums being used. Whenever I view acrylic paintings I can pick them out like a sore thumb compared to a tremendously painted oil painting. So I’m not really pretty at this moment technically speaking why and acrylic painting would take top honors. Technically there are not as. Regardless of them, using airbrushes and other techniques that the programs will allow them to use instead of only utilizing a paintbrush. In my current work here that you notice this has only retouch varnish on the outside, but underneath I have 10 color layers, all in Earth Pigments and luminosity if you could see it with your own eyes, I do not think you can see it through the digital medium, but the luminosity is tremendous and is literally my best duck Drake I ever painted and yet it didn’t even gather any momentum or even place. I’m very hopeful through a lot of dedication and continuously painting, much higher level work of art and carrying this forward for the rest of my art career I’ll be able to commence many other oil painters who have been using opaque oil paints in my view just ruins their work and makes it very non-dimensional and very flat basically the oil paints today being synthetically made most of the oil painters are just colorless. They are not creating at the level, Leonardo da Vinci or Vermeer created all those years ago and therefore they did not advance the science of oil painting. The recent modern analysis that can be research now and has just recently published about two years ago can be read and studied as the scientific world is slowly catching up to what Leonardo was trying to teach all those years ago, but nobody listened and they still do not listen. Where have you heard that before? Stay tuned if you’d like to see world class oil paintings even on digital will be in my view, the best in the world.

Have a good day……. many thanks Jimmy Springett wildlife painter. This particular painting is called ” Rock of Ages..”