Streamline and Innovate!

At Alexander Art, we watch a lot of Bill’s videos. We watch them in slow motion to analyze his brush strokes. We pay particular attention to how he mixes colors. We play them over and over, because we always find something that we didn’t see before. It was during these viewings that we began to notice some interesting things. We paid close attention to how Bill used his paint.

We mentioned, recently, that Alexander Art made three different white paints. Some paint manufacturers make a dizzying variety of colors that can overwhelm beginning painters. One of the great features of the Alexander method is how few colors and brushes painters need.

Analyzing Bill’s Videos

After analyzing many of Bill’s videos, we realized that he used titanium white for two tasks. He used it to create his signature mountain highlights. He also used it to mix with his other colors. Titanium white is a thick paint and doesn’t mix as well as a softer paint might. In fact, many times Bill would use Magic White™ to mix with his other colors. He did this when highlighting trees and foliage, particularly.

We wondered, might it be possible to make Magic White™ serve more than one purpose? Perhaps, we could streamline our line of colors. If we could do that, artists wouldn’t need to buy so much paint. We, further, wondered if we could make Magic White™ thicker. This would allow us to remove both Titanium White and soft white from our line. After all, how many different white paints do you need?

We spent the last five years working on the formula for Magic White™. Our new Magic White™ now serves the same role as the three prior paints. You can now use the new Magic White™ to cover your canvas before painting, to highlight your mountains, and to mix paint.

Making paint safer

However, we didn’t stop there. In reformulating Magic White™ we removed the solvents and added our new Magic Clear™ Oil. Our new Magic White™ will never yellow or darken with age. In fact, as it dries, it becomes even brighter. The removal of solvents makes our Magic White™ safer to use. We even added a hint of lavender to provide a pleasant scent to the paint.

When I first started painting, I used a competitor’s white to cover my canvas. I had to paint in my garage because covering any size canvas smelled to high heaven. Now, with the new Magic White™, I paint in my home and it smells great.

What about the yellow?

Alexander Master Artist Tom Anderson brought something else to our attention. Bill used Cadmium Yellow to highlight his trees. As you know, a thinner paint will stick to a thicker paint. Bill needed to thin his yellow to highlight. Many times he would use Magic White™ to thin the paint. Sometimes, when cleaning his brush, he would leave some paint thinner in it. The paint thinner would, of course, thin the yellow paint. We began to wonder, was our cadmium yellow too thick?