Discovered Casein

Casein is a wonderful, ancient paint. Basically the paint is emusified milk protein in a binder that has been used since before the time of King Tut. Casein is opaque, durable, and from a renewable source. But casein doesn't get used nearly so much as its list of advantages might suggest. For one thing, it dries like lightning and for another the color shifts somewhat when it does. Nonetheless, back in the heyday of illustration casein was commonly used. Today it has been replaced with acrylic and with computers.

"The Front Garden," casein on paper, 2017

A few years back I did a lot of casein studies to learn to handle the medium and to experiment. A few of the studies became full-fledged paintings, and some disappeared. By now all of these had been filed appropriately, I thought. But in rummaging through several computer files I found a few forgotten works like the one posted. This is a casein study from nearly three years ago that I did outdoors, unlike the majority of that series of work. And I did this one on watercolor paper instead of a more rigid support. It's a view of our front garden with a big bed of black-eyed susans in full flower and lilies in bud in the background. I started with a wash of earth red, then painted the garden bed and lawn over that, adding a few details here and there in pencil or ink, and leaving the red background to serve as distant woods. This particular study hasn't seen the light of a computer screen since it was photographed.

It was good to find a few of these as reminders. Casein is worth the effort. I'm going to add some more work in that medium as I go along.