Dry Touching or Dragging [feedly]

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Dry Touching or Dragging
// Gurney Journey

A 19th century painting manual describes a technique called "dry touching" where lighter tones of oils are scumbled over a middle tone base, with a result something like pastels.

Thomas Couture (1815-1879) Oil on canvas, 46 x 34 cm.

The manual says: "Dry-touching or Dragging,—is nothing more than going over certain parts of the picture, when it is dry, with light delicate finishing touches, in order to improve the character, and to relieve or give surface texture to objects requiring it. The tints used for this purpose may, as occasion dictates, be either lighter or darker than the parts to which they are applied; it must be dexterously done with a light free hand; in some places holding the brush loosely between the finger and thumb, so as to leave the colour contained in it, only partially adhering to the former more projecting touches."

Thomas Couture, (1815-1879) "Study of girl's head, oil on canvas

In this Couture sketch, the dry paint is used for modeling all the light tones, not just the finishing touches. 

For contemporary painters, the white paint coming from the tube may not be stiff or dry enough for this technique. If you squeeze out the paint on blotter paper (or newspaper or paper towels) the night before the painting session, the oil will be sucked out of the paint, making it drag nicely.

--J.S. Templeton, Guide to Oil Painting, 1845
Images from Flickr and Pinterest

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