I remember watching Jon Nagy on television when I was growing up. He hosted what I believe was the first “how to draw” show on TV, long before public television was ever invented. As a matter of fact, it was even before televisions had UHF knobs on them.
 
If you were a true devotee of Mr. Nagy, you would have purchased a drawing set that included one of the most unusual interactive devices ever to be marketed to the American public. A plastic sheet that was “static friendly” would adhere to a viewer’s TV screen, and one could draw along with Jon Nagy. The plastic would become a transparent piece of “paper” and a china marker would allow the viewer to trace the lines that Jon made on a paper that was put in front of the camera. This is nothing like the interactivity found on the Internet today where the masses can play in virtual worlds, battling each other or casting spells with ancient curses. I suppose Nagy felt that you could learn to draw by following the pencil strokes he placed on the paper. By breaking down a drawing into individual components and assembling them for the viewer, Jon Nagy could provide confidence and inspire the would-be artist to learn to render forms by the method he taught.
 
Jon Nagy could be your “pilot” to the world of drawing. Standing faithfully on “your side” of the television screen, you could be the co-pilot, the artist’s assistant so to speak, and follow Jon’s instructions.  
 
I can’t help getting the same feeling when I read advertisements for magic painting mediums that can help you paint like Rembrandt, Rubens or Van Dyck. If you buy this really expensive bottle of copal, amber, leaded, heat-bodied, sun bleached goop, you too can seek fame and fortune by painting like one of the old masters. Never mind that the best you could do before picking up this exotic medium was to render oddly shaped heads with squat bodies and tree trunks for arms. Kidding aside, the claims that a skilled artist could go from rather dull, lifeless depictions of the human form to ones that sparkled and glowed with radiant light is not outside of the realm of the advertising claims made by special medium purveyors.
 
The “prestige” of this magic act is fairly simple to decipher. You can make modern artists’ paints look “old” by introducing a medium that gives them the transparency of aged oil paints. Since lead and linseed oil interact and saponify to make a metal soap that renders the lead semitransparent, a medium that has the power to duplicate this visual phenomenon will make the painter’s brushstrokes look like a naturally aged painting, with all of its reflective and refractive properties. Works in museums don’t look as if they were painted a few months ago because time plays an important role in creating the visual qualities of a work of art. Paint changes color as it ages. Linseed oil yellows over time. Varnishes loose their clarity. Dirt and cracks change the surface of a painting. All of these factors work in conjunction to make old paintings appear the way they do today.
 
It would be safe to say that, given the witches’ brew found in many of these secret mediums of the masters, the user of these materials will achieve the effects of age far faster than paintings that contain simple pigment and linseed oil mixtures. The change won’t come within the first 20 to 40 years. However, we do know that the ingredients in most of these modern old master mediums will degrade the paint film over time far more than simple linseed or walnut oil and pigment combinations. As I’ve stated before, paint has a sufficient number of problems aging—with all of the inherent problems of becoming brittle, photo degradation of the pigment and yellowing of the medium, to have to withstand intrusion by truly hostile chemicals that serve no useful purpose.
 
Lots of ways exist to add small amounts of safe and enhancing mediums to paint. Let’s discuss them in the future.