In the studio 1/11/2015
I’ve had about a half-dozen painting sessions with The News. The 44″ x 60″ painting is mid-flight. I estimate there will at least that many more sessions before it’s finished. Large-sized paintings with just a few figures enable me to really work the figures. A lot of my paintings recently, even the large ones, have small-scale
I get a lot of email from readers, mostly technical questions, which I always answer. A recent correspondent asked my opinion about Blockx oils. Blockx is one of the premium brands and I cover it in my OIl Paint Brands reference. Blockx is really fine paint; Not long ago, I got a terrific price on their
Gallery problem
The widget that displays random images from the gallery on the front page is broken. After I applied the last upgrade, the widget stopped working. I am still waiting for the widget creator to provide a fix. If a fix isn’t available soon, I’ll rollback the widget to the prior version.
About yesterday’s rant
Yesterday’s rant started as the preamble to a much longer post about painting techniques and the craft of painting. The soon-to-be-published post is already too long so I removed the preamble. By itself, the preamble is rather mysterious and lacks context. I try to talk straight here and pull no punches, but ranting is not
Rant
I was taught nothing of practical use about painting when I was a student. Worse than the daily dose of esoteric BS was the relentless, sneering attack on the subjects of technique and history, which were held in utter contempt. Pollack, so I was lectured, allowed his brushes to dry in cans of house paint,
New ratings for Oil Paint Brands post
I updated the Oil Paint Brand post with new information and a rating for Michael Harding paints.
New links
Two recent links will be useful to people interested in the technical aspects of painting. Tad Spurgeon’s site provides a wealth of information about oils. This site describes how to make oil paints.While I haven’t followed the advice of either:-), both have a lot of reference material.
Oil Paint Brands Update
I updated the oil paint brand list with information about the binders used by some manufacturers (Blockx, Old Holland, Michael Hadring, Blue Ridge, and Holbein). I also downgraded my ratings for Blue Ridge. I prefer cold-pressed linseed to alkali refined method they use. They also use a blend of walnut and linseed oils. Finally, I’ve