Saturday 27 November 2010

Two oils, very different



I've done the very best thing I've done for years - resigned from an organization with inflicted meetings on me (and many others) without achieving anything. A body called a LINk, or Local Involvement Network - really NOT worth taking the trouble to investigate if you've never heard of them, and it's as much my fault as anyone else's that I ever got involved in the first place. Still, a hint: if you want to paint, paint; don't waste your time in pointless meetings....
I have, sort of, finished two oils. Sort of because I often add to them over time; oil paint can take quite a lot of additional work, provided you add more oil to the subsequent layers than you did to the early ones.
One is a highly-worked sunset scene of the River Ems, from a photograph (not on the Isle of Wight, but near Emsworth) and the other is of a local scene which I painted with a painting-knife, a sort of palette knife - ie, wooden handle, steel blade - but unlike a palette knife, used for actually mixing paint on the palette or painting surface, a painting knife has a very flexible blade of tempered steel, and is surprisingly sensitive. This one took roughly 10% of the time the first one took; it's no better or worse, I think - just a different technique.
It'll be fairly obvious which is which.
Because it's snowing here - and probably where you are too - I can't take them outside to get a decent photo, so these are taken indoors, with all the problems of glare this causes; but I wanted to get them on the site asap. I'll post better photos when I'm able to take them; I'll put 'em on here, and also on my gallery on www.painters-online.co.uk: you can find me, and a lot of my work, at www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/albumlistasp?user=4458.
Always worth looking at the Painters Online site - many fine artists there, and of course some less so; but you'll find better work there, on the whole, than you'll discover on even some professional artists' sites, because people on Painters Online are prepared to take a risk now and then and try something different. Take a look at Alan Owen, Phil Kendall, Matthew Ormston, BĂ©atrice Cloake, Kirstie, and many others, plus Rupert Cordeux, ex of Watercolour Challenge and also a very fine oil painter (and immensely self-critical). Not to mention Ade Brownlow, whose large acrylic paintings radiate energy and a real feeling for landscape.
Think it's getting to be time for a return to acrylic - especially one of my favourite paints, Chromacolour - and watercolour. I've been on an oil-painting kick for a while, but the fumes - in my rather small flat - are beginning to get to me just a bit. Oil paint, white spirit, low-odour thinners, plus the Calor Gas on which I have to rely for heating, are a less than brilliant combination. Wheeze. Hack.

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Watercolour Woes


I fought with this damn' painting ... sometimes they go well from the start, sometimes they don't. Nothing would go right with this one, I had to keep blotting it, applying salt to damp washes.... whatever happened to fast, loose, and fancy free?
Anyway, on reflection, I've done worse. This is a quarter Imperial size watercolour (11 inches by 15, in other words) on Bockingford rough paper. And the photograph is askew, I know: normally I photograph the paintings outside, for the benefit of the light. Today, the wind is such that I'd have lost it.
I'm showing it on the POL website as well, so apologies to those who were looking for a bit of variety. I have an oil on the go as well, which I'll post here first. Fair do's.....