Many a painter, or if you prefer artist, today appear to avoid such trivial matters, being much to basic for their evolved standing in an illustrious field. They leave these matters to others, who in their opinion, appear dumb enough to execute such subservient pursuits.

At times I admit to having come to avoiding answering questions regarding the proper preparation of surfaces. My answer often may be a simple - "Use your own best judgment".

In a time when Quick-Fix methods and materials are en vogue, my old fashioned, even if time-tested ways are sure to hit a sour note with people who can't wait for a paint to dry.

Back to the class in Japan........near the end of a rather condensed dissertation regarding priming and under-coating, a student bolted straight out of her chair with a startled: "Are you sure?" 

YES!   Indeed I was and still am sure. This because I have spent near 45 years evaluating and testing the act, as have generations of Guild Painters before me.

Many of the materials, tools and techniques made available today are made for mass-consumption, thus principally for the rank amateur. It is, in great part, these qualities , or the lack of such, which in turn prevent you from excelling in the crafts.

If you follow a herd of sheep, before long, you are likely to step into their compost.

It is, to an old grouchy craftsman, truly endearing and fascinating to witness, after a long creative drought, how today many a painter develops their craft to high levels of skill and artistry. At the same time, it is bewildering that so few bother to develop their basic painting skills alongside those which are the more creative. Realize that only if these basic tasks are performed well, will your work have a fair chance to endure time. Thus it may last not only for coming years, but for decades, perhaps centuries.

Your best creative and artistic effort is but a very thin layer which is sandwiched between your surface, its preparations and your final sealer or varnish!

You must develop "all" your painting skills, even the basic alongside those which are indeed creative and artistic. In exploring and analyzing your options you may just find that applying a coat of acrylic or kilz type product onto a raw wood base may not prove adequate in the long run.

Sure, I may be a fossil, a dinosaur or sorts, who spent the first year of his apprenticeship learning, what most of today's Decorative Painters would call beneath them …BASICS. This was followed by spending two more years developing Fundamentals. Then, after certification, devoting a lifetime building upon this sold base, nurturing, developing and expanding it. Yes, some cynic may argue that I am a slow learner, but I did learn plenty, from the ground up and I learned it well.

Buy a book, watch a few enlightening segments of TLC and HG type TV. Take a little class, say for a short week or two at the "Famous Painting School" and emerge a bona fide, certified professional.

Listening to many of the "Pro's" of book, magazine, school and television fame tell it, such initial investment entitles you to a life long weekly return of the sum total of what cash you did spend on your limited education. I have been asked why I was not on Miss-educational TV. Frankly I find many of their programs amusing at best, and insult and destructive to our craft at worse. Many a host and participating guest in this kind of Entertainment appear to be generated out of a virtual Decorative Twilight Zone. Some have as much akin with education as has the Rocky Horror Picture show.

The only way and reason an artist or teacher should participate in such shows would be if "they " are first "qualified" and second have a large measure of control over the production.

Recently one of the silly little Decorators, or Designers as they like to be called, came, ( apparently after a good nights sleep ) on to the screen telling her tiny worker imps, who had already begun painting a wall ( as usual in the middle of it ) . . . in a burnished orange.

"I have the whole thing up here ( pointing at her hair ), If we don't like it ( when finished ) we can always give it a white woashhhh ( wash )". Normally I would not mention this, because it is simply all to common - yet exactly that should bother us.

I have never had a need to apply more than two glazes over a colored base for a fine Tiffany or broken color technique. Never more that four/five for the most intriguing faux mabre. It should occur, even to someone impaired, that after the fifth/sixth glaze, the coverage should be such as to obscure virtually any evidence of the first glaze, much less the base color.

Sunshine, a paying clients home is not the place to experiment and practice. This you do at home, in your basement , before you sell your humble service. It is part of the dues we all should be willing to pay.

If you wish to be a true crafts man or women, then become one, behave and work like one. Prove that you are of value that you respect and are a master of your self and our craft.

Be of service, Sunshine, and remember that Serving does not a Servant Make.

Karl-Heinz