Woman in Purple Boots II is getting to that point where it’s fun to paint. The groundwork has been done and now it’s time to have fun. Painting can be compared to building a house. You need to calculate the amount of cement, 2″ x 4″s, and roof shingles. You need to calculate the time needed…
I have to laugh when I see my homemade mahl stick in one of these photos. Hey! It does the job, and its large size is useful on large paintings. Two Cakes hit a wall. Sometimes I get blind and can no longer ‘see’ the painting. I’ve learned from experience that that is usually related…
I didn’t rate Grumbacher Pre-tested paints when I created its entry in my Oil Paint Brand reference. I associate Grumbacher with my impoverished student days and hadn’t used their paints in years, so I couldn’t rate the brand. I recently bought several tubes and tried them. My memory proved to be right. Grumbacher is a high-end…
The light today, for once this winter, is good. I worked on these two paintings this morning. I finished (I think) the small (20″ x 24″), gray study. I wrote about this painting before. It is a study for a larger treatment. I finished the to-scale drawing on a sheet of paper then transferred it…
I worked on the two small paintings in the photo’s upper-center today. I finished the small (20″ x 24″) painting of the boy, Keith Fishing. I have been disciplined lately and worked exclusively on large paintings, some of which you can see, but I’m itching for a change of pace. I might spend some time–several…
I broke my palette knife this morning, the one I’ve used everyday for 10 years. I was doing what I do every day–creating my usual assortment of mixtures to go with my tube colors–when my stalwart palette knife snapped. The worn handle is on the left in the photograph. The blade is next to it and still…
I prepared today’s medium and took yesterday’s palette out of the butcher’s tray where I store it. (The rectangular palette is my workaday palette; I only use the traditional oval one to mix certain tones.) I use my workaday palette 2- or sometimes 3-days running before cleaning it. Even stored in the covered tray the colors…
I wrote about my antipathy toward synthetic brushes. This photo illustrates the point I made in the linked post. The four synthetic brushes on the left are old and misshapen. In my experience, synthetics quickly lose their shape and become good for little other than effects or glazes. The best thing about them, by far, is their cheap price. But this…