Whether the artist wanted to paint expressive portraits, landscapes or abstract works, they’ve often found the texture of paint is an important part of the painting experience. Painters found that this effect could be utilised to show form and texture and, by the nineteenth century had developed it further into the technique now known as impasto. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, artists began to use this technique for it’s own sake, creating works using this method alone.
Van Gogh used impasto extensively in his pictures to add shapes and patterns that helped convey the emotion in a work. Impasto can also have a role in creating depth within a painting. If used in along side washes and thin glazes, thick layers of paint can be used to help create the illusion of perspective.
In all likeliness, van Gogh would have added a little wax to his commercially prepared paints, this would have helped create a rich creamy paint ideal for impasto, it dries solidly without wrinkling, to with an even matt finish. Traditionally, the preferred type of wax for artists to use was beeswax. Beeswax can be purchased in blocks, pellets or small lumps, the white bleached version is the best option for artists. It can be added to oil paints by melting 1 part wax with 2 parts stand oil, and then mixing into the paint with a palette knife. Although beeswax melts at fairly low temperatures, it still remains stable and long-lasting. The wax should be gently melted it in a water bath, in the same way you would melt chocolate. You can adapt the consistency by adding more oil if the paint is too stiff or wax if it’s too fluid.
When adding of wax to their paints, artists found an ideal medium for producing brush marks and textures in the heavy layers of paint so typical of the impasto technique. Even so, where paint is applied in thick layers in this manner, it will take the painting a long time to dry.