Maulsticks
When my daughter was very young, with a very serious face she asked, "Daddy, why do you hold a big stick in your studio?" To a child, the most question-provoking thing about the studio was…
Category: Shop Talk
Bristle brushes
Even though I sometimes disparage bristle brushes, I use them all the time. I use them for medium or broad passages--not for finer areas. Like most students, I was taught that real painters used bristles…
Good flake white
Utrecht flak white continues to surprise me with its good performance. Considering its modest price, it's a good value. I am using it throughout this painting titled The Fair. It covers well and handles crisply.…
Paint bigly
I am painting three new canvases that fit the bigly category. Big for me, is 4' x 5' or thereabouts. In the preceding weeks, I was drawing bigly too--working on the drawings for the new…
Grove’s heat-polymerized oil
It's true that I've used the same medium for several years. That doesn't stop me from trying new materials--far from it! My invariable practice provides a baseline to which I can compare the new materials…
Reusing a drawing
I started a small oil yesterday. I transferred the drawing, or cartoon, to the canvas as I had earlier to a sheet of watercolor paper. You can see from the photo that both formats are…
Recent paint buy
I refreshed my paint stock last week. Instead of buying from Blue Ridge or RGH as I have been, I bought these oils from Blick. I like RGH but their tubes--the physical tubes--are the worst…
Scale again
Yesterday, I wrote about how scale affects paint handling. A figure on a 6-inch canvas is painted differently than the same figure on a 6-foot canvas. Pretty straightforward but a lot of artists get stuck…