it tends to cool the colors, so you’ll have to experiment, but i used it on a background or three and it helped mottle and soften the color without overpowering it. Not all whites are opaque and some really cool stuff can be done with adding zinc(transparant) white as a glaze. I realise white is quite opaque, could i mix white with my chosen colour and then add black to darken it back up again? Glazing something such as alizarin over cadmium red light, can also create a very vibrant effect. I agree with Keith, using a color other than white can be very interesting. This will produce a very intense effect, all without white. Another example would be laying down a glaze of permanent sap green, and then working in a mix of cadmium yellow and chromium green, for the highlights. In addition to what everyone has said above, you can apply a glaze, and then work in an opaque color, that is similar, i.e., if you are painting a red dress for example, you could lay down a glaze of permanent alizarin mixed with a touch of transparent red oxide, or permanent sap green, and then work the highlights in with pure cadmium red, wet into wet, and then you could add a little white to the cadmium, and add a few brighter highlights. It would be helpful to see what you are painting, and specifcally what it is that you are trying to do. How should I deal with this? Paint white underneath first and let it dry? or what? I have a dark colour that i wish to paint some shapes on but the transparency of the colour i wish to use means the dark shows through. After the fall of the First Empire in 1815, the Bourbon kings had returned to power and the shipwreck discredited the newly restored monarchy: the captain of the Medusa had obtained his position on the strength of his connections with power rather than his competence in fact, he had not sailed at all in the past twenty years! Unable to prevent the ship from running aground, he left part of his crew to drift on a makeshift raft.I’ve recently been getting my head around the idea of the different transparencies of oil paints. This painting, first exhibited in 1819, was more than just a depiction of a tragedy. The painter chose the bleakest moment, when they saw the ship that would eventually rescue them sailing away in the distance. The figures in the scene are not mythological heroes or brave warriors, but victims of a shipwreck, forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. The resulting composition was a history painting, but based on a recent event rather than a ‘prestigious’ historical subject. Unusually for his period, Géricault began to work on this huge painting without having been commissioned. Jacques-Louis David, The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of the Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on 2 December, 1804 Room 702 (Salle Daru), Denon wing, Level 1 Compositions by the greatest names in French painting – such as Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix – are now displayed side by side on the walls. The rooms originally presented works by 17th- and 18th-century French masters, with large 19th-century paintings added later. The predominantly brown tones of the paintings stand out against the red background.

The Red Rooms were part of Napoleon III’s project to expand the museum and give it splendour worthy of his imperial status the red and gold decoration, created in 1863 by Alexandre Dominique Denuelle, contributed to that goal. That is the effect that these huge history paintings can create – so it was important to find an exhibition space that would do them justice. At six metres high and almost ten metres wide it is certainly an impressive work, giving the viewer a sense of actually attending the ceremony. Napoleon I reportedly exclaimed ‘ One can walk through this painting!’ when he saw Jacques-Louis David’s depiction of his coronation ceremony. The largest French paintings in the Louvre

Red background painting