New Oil Painting; A Blessed Day

Hello Everyone;
Here is another new oil painting.  This is an 11" X 14" original oil painting completed on a triple primed stretched cotton canvas. I just love the peaceful feel to a lonely waterfall.  This is a painting of a place that to my knowledge, does not exist.  I had this image in my head yesterday of this secluded, peaceful scene and decided to paint it.  Most of my work is from my imagination.  That is why most of my landscape scenes have certain similarities to them.  My style, if you can call it a style is peaceful, secluded places that have no interference from the real world.  We get so much garbage from everyday life, we do not need it when we get home as well.  My strategy to fight the ever growing rash of fear mongering media and self centered lying politicians is to get lost in my mind.  Explore beautiful places that do not exist anywhere except within the confines of my heart and then paint those places.  All are welcome, but there are some rules.  First rule, no one lies to each other.  Rule two, no one hurts each other, and the final rule.  Every morning when you wake, you need to reach your arms out to the heavens, take a deep breath and say Thank You for this perfect day.  We need to try that once in awhile instead of what we are doing now.  Who knows, maybe it would make things just a bit better.  If not, I still have these peaceful places in my heart and I will continue to paint them as long as I am allowed.  Have a Blessed Day everyone.  Everything is good.

New Oil Painting; New Blick Painting Panel

Hello Everyone;
Here is another oil painting.  I completed this painting earlier today.  It is an 8" X 10" original oil painting I completed on a Blick Premier Canvas Panel.  This is my first time trying this archival painting panel from Blick.  It is a primed surface ready to paint on, but the finish is smooth.  Actually, the painting surface is silky smooth which may be a bad thing for some people.  I was a little hesitant and I needed to change up my approach.  When using these panels, you really need to have a light touch when applying the paint.  If you use too much pressure, and for these panels that is not much, the paint seems to streak on as opposed to being applied on.  With a lighter touch, you can still get the desired thickness of paint without streaking.  Once I got the hang of it, I really started to enjoy working on it.  The colors seem to pop out more so then on canvas and fine details are easily achieved.  Like I said, they take a little bit of a learning curve, but they are very nice.  I will definitely be getting more panels to try and see if my work overall, looks a bit better on these supports.  One thing too, even though they are archival, they are a little less money then other archival primed hard board surfaces.  This 8" X 10" for instance, I believe was $7.00 and it was 7/8" thick with a nail hole on the back to hang your work.  That is really a good price.  Give them a try and let me know what you think.

Practice Makes Perfect

Hello Everyone:
So, you want to be an artist, or a musician or an athlete.  For most people, the race is won before you even get to the track.  Everyone who is successful in anything in this world makes it a point to practice their craft on a regular basis.  I heard on ESPN one time that Tiger Woods hits at least 1,000 golf balls a day trying to improve on each swing.  That type of dedication can make you one of the best in the world at something, just like he is.  If you are a person, like me who wants to be really good at something, but cannot devote 12 hours a day to our craft, then we must still practice regularly, but not quite as obsessively.  For artists, try and give an hour a day to practicing techniques, brush strokes, etc...  I paint a lot of landscapes, so trees and mountains and things are very important in my work.  I use old cheap canvas panels and do landscape elements regularly.  These are in oil paint, my sketchbook has the same types of practice elements, but those are in watercolors.  Really, if you give an hour of real practice each day, you will be surprised at how quickly you improve.  Once you start to see your work bear fruit, you will increase your practice time without even thinking about it.  One thing to keep in mind though.  If you make a finished painting each day lets say, that is also practicing, but I found that when you use your best materials with the mind set of making a finished piece, subconsciously we do not allow ourselves to experiment or take chances.  Those chances, thinking outside the box is where we grow the most as artists.  Just a thought.

Oil Painting: Quiet Peaks

Hello Everyone;
Here is another oil painting I finished today.  Yes, I finished two oil paintings within a few hours of each other.  Oil paint is a very easy paint to manipulate.  You can brush it over wet paint, you can wait to dry and brush into dry work, you can combine the techniques.  Oil painting is complicated in some ways when it comes to mediums and solvents, but in its application, oil painting can be the most forgiving of the painting mediums.  This painting has both techniques I mentioned in this post.  The sky was completely dry when I painted the clouds in and the mountains were very wet when I painted the highlights.  As you can see, both work well, it is just a matter of practicing enough to get comfortable with the techniques as well as the paint you use.  Oil paint and really, all painting supplies vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.  French Ultramarine for one brand acts and looks a bit different then another so it is really important that you understand the paint you use.  It will help make your learning curve just a bit easier.

Oil Painting: Peaceful Day

Hello Everyone;
Here is a new oil painting.  This may be the first oil painting on this blog.  It has been a long time since I painted in oils.  They are very complicated, messy and very dangerous to use if your not careful.  Those are really, the very reasons why I stopped painting in oils almost six years ago.  Since then, I have learned of new products and techniques that make painting in oils much safer, and nowhere near as complicated.  I missed the lush, deep colors oil paint gives you as well as the ability to correct mistakes much easier then most painting mediums.  Shortly, I will be posting the supplies I use when painting in oils.  If you wish to try this wonderful medium, be sure to do your research first.  Learn as much as you can from blogs, you tube and any other resource you can find.  Once you have all of the information, you will have much more success and much less frustration.

Watercolor Painting; New Painting On Aquabord

Hello Everyone;
Here is a new watercolor painting.  As you know, I have been using aquabord a lot lately.  This painting is no different.  I used a 5" X 7" piece of aquabord to do this simple landscape.  I am finally starting to get used to the amount of paint needed to make the colors stand out better.  That really is the main issue with using this support.  The amount of paint and water on your brush.  I believe, once you get that combination down, painting on this surface will be much easier and very rewarding.  Lifting color is truly as easy as advertised.  Lifting for your highlights is pretty simple.  A damp clean brush and a paper towel to wipe off paint from each pass. You generally do not get to pure white again, but you get a really good highlight.  The mountains in the distance and the foreground rocks were highlighted that way.  As you can see, the lifting of color works very well.  Even though learning how to use aquabord can be challenging and it does take some effort, I am convinced it will be well worth the time.

Watercolor Painting: Really? A Bird on Aquabord

                                                                                Hello Everyone;
Here is another bird painting on a piece of Aquabord made by Ampersand.  This was completed on a  6" X 6"  1/8" panel.  For some reason, I have never tried the square panels.  I always overlooked them.  This bird vignette actually looks a bit better on a square panel then a standard 5" X 7".  Again, these panels have a bit of a learning curve.  I do not want to talk you out of using them, but I need to give my honest assessment.  Actually, the only reason I keep trying to use them is two fold.  First, I like the idea that my customers can hang their paintings without glass or frames.  A huge savings right there.  The second reason is the work I have seen on these panels by artists that really understand how to use this support.  The colors are magnificent.  Edges are defined or faded out perfectly, the whole piece just looks much better then paintings on paper.  For those two reasons, and possibly others, I will keep trying to perfect my technique using them.  I do believe the time and patience needed to get good at working on this support will be rewarded by how my art will eventually look on them.  In the mean time, My work looks good, just not where it will be one day.  Have a blessed day.