Saturday, September 8, 2012

Oil Painting- Not So Soft

This piece has been hopping on and off the easel for too long. So I thought I's share a quick snap shot of it to encourage me to finish it.


Nothing digital here. In the beginning I started the piece as if the Oil paint were water color- almost. But more syrupy, sticky watercolor. Think about pancake syrup. (I dis-like normal liquin, but like Liquin Fine Detail.) This thin translucent underpainting let me spatter turp into it to eat away texture and get some sweet dragging effects with old, frayed brushes.

Then that dried and sat forever collecting dust till I picked up some more opaques and started in again finding a balance between translucent and opaque.

Then I tried something new. Oil based sign painting enamel. (Like pinstripers often use.) Most of the design work is created that way. Oh oh oh, how sweet the solid laydown of paint was. It would take me many coats of normal oil paint to achieve what enamel does in one coat.

The crayon wording and sketchy areas are oil pastel. Which is so great for drawing on an oil painting (That is dry.) and wiping off if you make a bad move or even using trup to melt it into a stroke. I planned on painting lines over the more broken crayon stroke.

But a great friend, Dave Seeley, http://www.daveseeley.com/ is suggesting there might be something cool to leaving some marks almost crayon like. Oooo contrasting textures, I like that thought a lot! Thanks Dave!

Who knows! Painting should be fun, take risks, don't lock yourself in to a preconceived vision all the time or you may miss the piece talking to you. Really it will try to talk to you. Don't be stubborn, open yourself up to the conversation, and give it the opportunity to change your mind.

Here is an earlier detail shot. Darn it, her eyes are not in alignment yet. Thus she is never finished.


1 comment:

  1. wow! so cool the different layers and techniques you used to achieve textures! thanks for going into your process! you're right about the eyes, but it kinda evokes this uneasiness that way- unsettling- i don't know. i guess it isn't what you're going for, but i kinda like it that way. it's unexpected. and it keeps pulling my eye, even though there are these other interesting facets in the textures and hair ad wings and clasps... the background, though, is phenomenal. when you finish, it would be really nifty if you could post a close-up of a snippet of the background. man. good work!

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