Technique: Work on canvas (US: linen)

  

Philippe Devaud consciously chose apprenticeship as a restorer as the foundation for his artistic work. He began making the paints used in his techniques from his own recipes in 1972, and since 1983 has used only raw materials from Dr. Georg F. Kremer, master chemical engineer; Farbmühle, D-88317 Aichstetten (http://www.kremer-pigmente.com).
Structure of the oil technique:
The foundation is traditional or acrylic gesso. A detailed drawing is made with silverpoint, sanguine or charcoal, and occasionally with crayons handmade from raw pigments.
The imprimatur layer can be partially wiped out in the lights and drawn over in the shadows.
Light and shade are modelled in with resin-oil medium, building the lights with lead white, titanium white, zinc white or lead-yellow opaque to semi-opaque. In shadows semi-opaque to glazing with an additive of pigments to accelerate the drying process.
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After drying: A glazing or semi-opaque layer is applied with a chemically bonding medium and an additive of pigments that accelerate the drying process.
He then returns to modelling light and shade as above. In several processing steps there are up to 14 layers in the "Inkarnat" (skin colour). Proximity and depth are achieved by applying complementing pigments in a particular order, as well as by careful control of the "Sfumato" (ital.: smoky).

Media: 5 different oils (4 of them self thickened in the sun and 10 years old) as well as 5 different resins are used over the entire painting process. Until 1994, he worked with doubly-rectified turpentine, thereafter using a coal hydrogen solvent of the group of the cyclo-aliphates.


 
Brush: 5 different types of long-handled brushes using 5 different kinds of hair – Kolinsky sable, black sable, badger, pig and a nylon blend, especially made by the da Vinci artist brush factory, Defet GmbH, Nuernberg (http://www.davinci-defet.com). He works on the easel with pallete and mahlstick. His brush techniques vary and can be partially traced to old letter painting, to marbling techniques or to ceramic(s) painting. The result is the enamel-like glow in the paint surface.

Simlar to the Dutch master, Vermeer van Delft (1632-1675) (with whose works Marc Lacroix, one off the photographers of Salvador Dali, compared the order of colour of Devaud as early as 1989), Philippe Devaud develops his pieces to a large extent out of non mixed, layered paint films. Thus the spectrum of the light comes to its full potential.
What the viewer experiences are the soul of the piece, its expressive strength and its internal fire, everything achieving a quality in which old-masterly painting techniques experience their reincarnation.
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