Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Cherries in Pitcher


Second stage oil on glass-like gessoed masonite. I'll let this dry for a couple of days then glaze in the table cloth. Then I'll finish the pitcher and the last cherry.

Manito Park Finished


8 x 10 oils on canvas

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Manito Park stage two


working in two layers: a washed in thin layer to establish value and hue, then a thicker impasto on top. Background and middle ground nearly done. Its a very Thomas Kincaid subject, but I'm trying not to go there. The foreground will be large strokes of paint and I'll use palette knife and watercolor brushes for the lawn to give variety to the brushwork.

Monday, May 3, 2010

two new step by steps



It's time for a personal challenge. I'm going to post two paintings that I am starting and post the progress steps on them here. The first one is a landscape from a local botanical gardens. This one will be done like the last two landscapes in oils on canvas. The still life of cherries in a silver pitcher is on masonite with an extremely smooth finish. I haven't tried oils on masonite yet, and it is very different so far! Its like trying to paint with mayonnaise on a chalk board. It will be hard to blend wet on wet on this surface, so I will have to lay the paint on side by side and do soft brush blending, working with out medium and keeping things on the dry side. I'll have to let it sit between sessions and dry out, too. The smooth surface makes the paint 'lift' if you repeatedly stroke the brush, so it will be interesting to see how I like this support for the oil medium. Piece of cake with acrylics, but totally different with oils. The idea is to have very little surface texture to deal with.