It doesn't matter how the paint is put on,
as long as something is said.
Jackson Pollock

Canvas

I use linen and cotton canvases and I stretch and prepare them myself with acrylic gesso. Before stretching I always wash the fabric in lukewarm water to get rid of the factory applied sizing. I first stretch each piece of canvas on a temporary stretcher, which is some 10 centimeters bigger than my intended canvas. Then, when the priming is done, I take the canvas from that stretcher, cut the borders and re-stretch it on the permanent stretcher. I do this in order to get a more uniform texture all over the surface. I used to use only the best kinds of wood and the tongue-and-groove kind of stretcher, with tightening wedges, but they have become so difficult to find in Brazil that I've ended up using the cheaper ones made of pinus with glued or stapled corners...

Over the years I got used to a very peculiar canvas texture that is very rough, like sandpaper. I use a painting roll to slowly achieve it. But I my first one or two coats of primer are applied with a large brush in order to make sure the primer get a permanent bond with the fabric. Each layer of primer is sanded, and the next layers are applied with a roll. I don't sand the last one or two layers. After all, I must have applied some 5 layers in total.

Sometimes I use a very luminous imprimatura made of diluted acrylic paint, preferably Golden Fluid, using intense organic pigments like arylide yellow or pyrazolone orange. Over the imprimatura I do a contour drawing using charcoal, or transfer a more detailed drawing on paper. On other occasions I prefer to do a local colors underpainted with oil or alkyd paints thinned with white spirits and a little quick drying alkyd medium.

Paints and Brushes

I use professional oil paints of various reliable brands: Winsor&Newton, Rembrandt, Gamblin, Utrecht, Maimeri, Grumbacher, M. Graham, Holbein, etc. The brushes I use the most are hog hair, varying from some very cheap ones made in Brazil, to the best interlocked chinese bristles made by Winsor&Newton, Isabey, etc. For details it's essential to have some good red sable or kolinsky flat or square brushes, and Trekell makes some very good ones.

Essential to my method of painting is the oil of cloves. It's not an oil, actually, but a solvent, and it evaporates so slowly that it hinders the drying process of the oil paint. Then I'm able to work on an apple, for instance, for some 4 or 5 days while keeping it a single coat. If the paint dried before I finished it, I would have to paint over that first layer and then I would lose some luminosity and freshness. On the other hand, there are things that have to be painted in a few layers, like glass, for example. Then I use quick drying alkyd mediums to reduce the drying rate.

My palette is basically the following: phthalocyanine green (PG7 and PG36, WN and Rembrandt), cadmium yellow deep, medium, pale, and lemon (PY35 WN), cadmium red deep, medium and light (PR108, WN, MGraham, Rembrandt and Holbein), cadmium red purple (an excellent deep red made by Rembrandt), quinacridone PV19 (sometimes I use Maimeri's "primary magenta", other times "permanent rose" from Winsor and Newton), quinacridone magenta (PR122, the best one I've ever seen is made by Gamblin), dioxazine purple (PV23, also by Gamblin, but I only use it in very dark spots), phthalocyanine blue (PB15, W&N, Rembrandt and Utrecht), and titanium white (Rembrandt and Winsor&Newton). I never use black pigments (a lesson by the impressionists), and earth colors I only use when I want to experiment something different... (they tend to produce too dull mixtures). But mars violet, or caput mortum is a color I consider very special...

Still life

I always work from real. I put the props on a large table, and arrange them until I achieve an interesting composition. I usually define the basic composition in a number of thumbnail drawings made beforehand. But when the real model arrangement is good enough, I do a detailed drawing the size of the canvas, and then transfer it to the canvas. Then I usually do a thin local color underpainting of the background and secondary elements (cloth, paper, cubes, etc) using thinned oil or alkyd paints and an alkyd medium, leaving the white canvas intact in the fruit areas so that the fruit have more luminosity. Sometimes, instead, I do a flat bright yellow underpainting for the fruit.

Often, specially in the summer, the fruit ripen and eventually get rotten while I'm still painting them. It's not always easy or even possible to replace them so in that case I have to use my memory. Lately I've been trying to use photos of the models but it hasn't worked as it should...

Landscapes

Nowadays one can't help using photos instead of, or as a complement to, plain air sketches. I've used only photos. I sketch the basic lines directly on the canvas, over a bright orange, usually acrylic, imprimatura. I try to use a single paint layer whenever possible, so I use slow drying paints. My palette is very reduced: phthalo green, cadmium yellow (mid), quinacridone magenta, dioxazine violet, and titanium white. Sometimes a little phthalo blue when I want a bluer touch on the sky.

Drawings

My drawing method is the most simple: usually a single layer of graphite pencil which later I cover with fixative. I don't like blending much, but when I do it (on backgrounds, for instance) I use small pieces of cotton cloth, paper towel, and soft brushes. Blending too much results a monotonous texture. I use both kneaded and vynil erasers a lot, drawing with them. The papers I've been using are Canson Mi-Teintes (I love its back texture) and Fabriano Artistico, and I use Tombow Mono and Mars Lumograph pencils, most of the time ranging from 2H to 2B, sometimes 4B, 6B and even 9B (Faber-Castel Pitt Graphite sticks.