Paint Is Colored Glue

Did you apply any mud to smooth the surface before you painted the apartment?

A few years ago I looked at buying a listed building in the UK (mentioned in pevsner as well).

And you MUST use special old paint that fades very quickly to be authentic.

> 15 years later, the apartment looks just-painted

Curious what you mean?

In my experience, new paint coats are needed because of marks left on walls -- accumulated smudges, scuffs, furniture bangs, nicks, filled anchor holes, etc. None of which higher-quality paint has anything to do with... I assume?

Am I wrong? Assuming paint is applied correctly in the first place, what are the longevity benefits of using a higher-quality paint?

Ballpark estimate by somebody who operates in the paint industry and has done so for almost fifteen years (albeit what is for you likely a foreign country: Italy). Industry associations estimate that the cost of materiel amounts to between 20% and 30% of the total cost experienced by the homeowner, depending on various factors (interior/exterior, type of finish desired, & cetera). So roughly three quarters of your “painting bill” comes from labour, not material. Knowing this, the DIY chains actually hike the prices of what are admittedly lower-grade paints because they know that by cutting out labour costs theirs is still a winning proposition for cash-strapped homeowners desperate enough to “Damage It Yourself”.

It’s pretty dismal. And broadly speaking, it's unsustainable.

You sometimes need to be careful, depending on climate and construction specifics, what sort of paints you apply to the walls in modern buildings. Using vapor-closed paints (or worse, vinyl wallpaper) will not allow the drywall to dry to the interior and can result in mold and mildew growth.

I don't know the characteristics of acrylic artists' paint, but there might be reason to be careful.

One thing I've also been wondering about is if repainting every other year, even with vapor-open paints, would have a similar effect. So many rental properties just end up with layers and layers of paint.

Having done both art painting with acrylic and building painting with acrylic-based paints, I don't know that I completely agree that art acrylics are better for wall coating than wall paints. No small part of the higher price for art acrylics vs wall paint acrylics is the pigment density. A blue that looks back into you when you look at it can be entirely appropriate for artistic work. Or, if it's not supposed to be the blue that's looking into your soul, you can mix that cobalt blue with a mars yellow to get the exactly correct shade green needed, because you're never going to get the green you want using a phthalo green as your base. Most people neither want nor need the intensity of color, nor the color flexibility that comes with art paints when it comes to their wall colors.

Additionally, art acrylics are typically very thick, to allow the artist a high degree of flexibility in application density, a flexibility that's just not needed for wall application. You correctly note that labor is the major cost for house repair. In light of that, it strikes me as silly to buy a bunch of extra-thick art paint and take the time to thinning it down the the appropriate consistency for wall application, instead of just buying a volume of paint that was already at the appropriate viscosity.

An acrylic-latex intended for outdoor use is going to be formulated to account for the fact that exterior surfaces see wider temperature swings in the summer and winter, and will be more flexible in its final cured form, reducing the flaking and cracking caused by the temperature-driven expansion and contraction that comes with the seasons. The formulation is also likely to account for the greater UV exposure its going to have outside. If you try to coat the exterior of your house with art paints, you're going to be spending a lot more money, it it might not last as long than if you used a paint intended for the purpose.

Now, if your goal in either scenario is art or aesthetics, than that's a completely separate discussion. If you want the wall of your house that faces the local park to be a mural highlighting fundamental truths of the human condition, more power to you. Though, in that case, you might do better to eschew pre-forumlated paints entirely, and instead buy the raw outdoor-use formulated resins and pigments yourself, and mix as appropriate.

> The last time I let my university landlord paint my apartment, it took days to clear the furniture, and I was instructed to do no paint prep. There were peels coming down from the ceiling. The painters exploited this "paint is glue" theory by painting under the peels and pushing them flat. I channeled my desire to kill them on the spot by politely escorted them out in mid-job and never letting anyone paint for me again.

Okay, that's just sloppy work. I'd have wanted to kill them too. When I was painting commercially, if I or my supervisors had caught anyone doing that, said slacker would be off the crew permanently.

When you are painting cinderblock it's a lot easier.

It's not impossible, computers have been modeling 3D fluids for a long time. It might be computationally intensive, but definitely not impossible.

Oh, yeah, and waves in the water of those hyper-detailed Italian 16th century paintings, or tree leaves -- when lit correctly, you get specular highlights that seriously look like sunlight glistening on there. Blows me away every time.

Those paintings are quite low-resolution on average, but it took me a while to figure out how they could add so much resolution where it mattered, and turns out it's because they have an entire extra dimension to vary things in.

> (I also distinctly remember being shocked by the size of some paintings, especially the crowning of Napoleon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Napoleon_I#/medi...) This painting was printed in many of my history school books, but I was not even remotely aware that is nearly 10 meters wide.)

And yet, it's the postal stamp-sized Mona Lisa that gets all the attention...

Sure, it's a good painting, but I personally find it to pale in comparison to the other works on display at the Louvre.

I can highly recommend John Berger's legendary documentary series Ways Of Seeing. The first episode explores precisely this issue - how our perception of painting is affected by reproduction. It has perhaps the most arresting opening scene of any documentary series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

I read a book about the Revolutionary War called "Washington's Crossing" by David Hackett Fischer. The wrap-around cover of the book is, appropriately, the iconic painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Crossing_the_Delawa...).

I learned that the actual painting was nearby in NYC at The Met. When a friend visited, I wanted one of my goals was to go to The Met and see the painting. I entered the American Wing close enough to closing time that I worried I may not find the painting in time. I started wandering, turned a corner, and sat dumfounded starting at the very thing I was looking for, sitting 21 feet in width at the end of the hall.

This article is really interesting and I love the insight provided about pigment layering to achieve remarkable effects, however I think what the title says is totally wrong.

Paints are technically coatings and comprise a large and diverse industry of products for wide-ranging applications. Wall paint is very different than artist paint, which is very different than car paint, which is very different than the type of paint you might apply to pipes to prevent corrosion, etc..

Glue is an adhesive, and while the resins used to make adhesives may sometimes be the same resins used to make coatings (Gorilla glue is epoxy-based, and many floor coatings you walk over all day and never think about are epoxy-based as well), the actual products being used -- the can of paint or the stick of glue you buy at the store -- are formulated with resins, pigments, additives, binders, chain-extenders, fillers etc etc, that are specific to the product's unique application.

So basically, paint is not glue. Paints are coatings and glues are adhesives. Sure, paints have to adhere to their substrates, and adhesives must adhere to their sometimes very different substrates as well, but paint and glue are really totally different things. You could say that coatings and adhesives are both formulated polymeric systems, but you miss out on a lot of interesting subtlety that entire industries are based on when you say "paint is glue."

Not a direct response, but in the case of modern automotive paints, especially 2 part urethane or epoxy ones it is exactly right - they're even based on the same chemicals!

Of course, that doesn't really mean that paints work as glues, but you can add pigment/dye to a lot of glues and get a workable paint. (workable in the sense that they will adhere and color. they may not have the consistency that makes them work well as a paint).

The Chem Engineer finds terms like Resin, useless.

It's kind of like saying, tape.

Which tape? Easy peel? Or duct tape?

I imagine that this is possible because there is only one type of resin that's useful in this field. Or trade secrets...

From what I know about wood finishers/lacquerers, their requirements seem anything but prosaic, there's a whole science behind it - especially for those in business of refurbishing old/antique furniture.

> One typically doesn't glue things together with paint

A friend of mine had his house repainted and the contractor farmed it out to some idiots. They painted all of the windows shut. No one noticed until after the paint had dried.

It's as solid a glue as you could want. :-)

(As anyone who's been sloppy and lazy with a can of paint knows.)

I would guess that the main reason for linseed oil not forming a hard surface coating on wood is that it doesn't form a surface coating at all. It soaks in.

Maybe if you saturate the wood, let it dry, and then keep adding additional coats, you'd start to get one. But, in a world where varnish exists, I'm not sure why you'd do that unless you were trying to reproduce a period technique or something.

oil painter here.....

basic linseed oil takes ~70 years to cure properly. pure linseed does, in time, a nice hard firm.

there are a number of plant oils for painting (saffron, sunflower, walnut, linseed, poppy: different dry rates and hardness rates), and there are a number of ways for treating them. Specifically we usually avoid plain boiled linseed oil, as it tends to yellow. That is, I believe, the common hardware store oil paint.

fundamentally - artist oils are engineered for divergent purposes than house oils.

resins are hugely variant - artists are usually suspicious of things that aren't engineered & tested to last > 50 years, so house painting probably has a much larger variety.

the pigments affect the oil dramatically. quinacridone pigments stay wet for days, if not weeks, whereas umbers (due to the manganese) will dry within 24 hours.

with respect to varnishes, that's not how oil painting artists think of varnishes: a traditional varnish is dammar resin dissolved into (pure) gum spirits of turpentine, laid on about 6 months after the painting is touch-dry. Today we typically use a acrylic varnish with a UV protectant, i.e, what's sold under the trade name "Gamvar". Such modern varnishes are designed to not link against the oil and permit stripping and reapplying to use as a protective layer.

it's technically correct to call oil paint colored glue, I think. But it's not useful to think of it that way. I think of it as "oily mud applied with a hairy stick" when I feel reductionist.

I love talking about artist oil paints, happy to answer any other questions.

That's interesting, it's very similar to the way many comics are done -- one person does the drawing and inking, and it's often colored by a different person (or at least as a different process if the team is small).

Before anyone runs with your suggestion, it's worth pointing out that flaxseed is what people can use (which is a food-grade equivalent to linseed).

And then before anyone runs with that suggestion, it's actually not a great way to season cast iron - it turns brittle and the seasoning will chip away (experienced this myself, and then did research).

A great place to start for seasoning cast iron is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5rhq9n/the_rcasti...

All glue is dough if you're brave enough.

For better glue I recommend gummy bears as raw material. Starch-based ones are more brittle.

(Disclaimer: I am probably not the best gluemaker.)

Yes. http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

I think its fair to say you might've missed the opportunity to grant some poetic license.

Maybe the wider point was the more philosophical one: art binds our minds together, and therefore paintings are a kind of mind glue, figuratively ..

At least the abstract is more precise:

> The secret of oil paint, as mastered by our greatest artists

Nevertheless, an interesting read.