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, Béatrice 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.