Category: Painting Techniques

The enamels color painting of precious gems and its carving and enchasing are the top techniques in watches field. However, Jaeger-LeCoultre smartly utilizes these techniques into the watches making and art creation, deducing an ultimate elegance. Jaeger-LeCoultre is one of the few designer brands capable to use various kinds of traditional decoration on the wristwatches.

In 2009, Jaeger-LeCoultre designers specializing in enamels decorative art show their genius by two series of watches, namely, Master Minute Repeater and Master Grand Tourbillon, guiding you to have a subtle touch on two kinds of traditional techniques-High-temperature baking and mosaic enamel.

Venus Master Minute Repeater is the best representative of the marvelous enamel technique. Jaeger-LeCoultre chose one of the four classic paintings, Venus as its motif and used enamel color painting to decorate the watch dial. The inspiration comes from several aspects. But all is relative to Italian Renaissance, Spanish Academism, and French Classicism. The enamel painters of Jaeger-LeCoultre selected the classic image as their producing inspiration, including The Birth of Venus, The Venus of Urbino, Rokeby Venus and Venus Anadyomène.

Besides the extraordinary expression capability, all the masterpieces fit the small dial of Master Minute Repeater. Jaeger-LeCoultre subtly combined its respectable painters to the sweet ring of Master Minute Repeater, which is the new breakthrough in its watch making field. In order to assure the collective value, the wristwatch has hour and minute display. There are two additional displays on the watch dial, making it legible and low-pitched. The torsion released by double going-barrel is set at the position of four o’clock, and the power reserved displays at the position of eight o’clock.

Scumbling techniques have been used by master painters since the 1600s to create smooth gradations, modify a previously dried layer of paint and to add a sense of depth. This technique is accomplished by applying thin layers of light opaque colors over dark layers of dried transparent paint. The final results gives a painting a surface that various in how much of the under painting is revealed.

An ultra thin layer of an opaque paint can soften an area of a painting while giving it a misty, almost out of focus look that might be typical of background objects. Adding a thicker layer of paint to an area would naturally give that object an appearance of being in the foreground. However, scumbling too much of a canvas with thick opaque paint can result in a return to a flattened sense of depth.

The scumbling technique is often used to create a beam of light penetrating an otherwise darken room. It is also useful to add a glowing effect to accentuate individual objects and skin tones.

An advantage of scumbling is that if it does not produce the desired effect the still wet top layer can be removed with a clean cloth alone or with a solvent like turpentine as needed.

Famous painters and paintings that employ a scumbling technique include:

– Rembrandt and at least two of his famous paintings called “Artist Contemplating the Bust of Homer” and “Self Portrait”. Both of these were oil paintings on canvas.

– The French Master David Jacques-Louis and his painting “Madame Charles-Louis Trudaine”

Glazing is sometimes confused with scumbling but in reality produces depth in the opposite way by causing the surface of the painting to appear to be receding.