Turpentine diaries 12/31/2018
Art is filled with aphorisms. Fat over lean, for instance, is a famous adage. The meaning for this old saw that is the most straightforward is to paint thickly-applied paint…
Artists with small brushes
Most of the tropes we learn about art and art-making are rubbish. One meaningless trope is, “Real artistes only use large brushes.” Alright, then. “A six-inch brush for this five-inch…
Turpentine diaries 7/16/17
I decided to work on my backlog of unfinished studies and small paintings. I worked on all of the paintings in the photo today, the bottom-left one last. Read moreCleveland Museum…
Turpentine diaries 4/28/18
This photo shows my first painting session with Agamemnon and Orestes. I know, I know, a bit high falutin but I am reading Aeschylus’s Eumenides. Agamemnon and Orestes is 44″…
Turpentine diaries 3/17/19
As I get older, my memory gets better and better–I remember less and less. 😉 One thing I am really good at it is forgetting. Forgetting is a most useful…
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…
My easel is not worthless
I wrote glowingly about the Utrecht easel that I purchased. I said that it was a great bargain–an under-$300 medium-duty easel. But soon a support broke and the mechanism to…
Turpentine diaries 11/11/17
I finished On the Square then put down my brush and took a walk. Sometimes I have to get out of the studio to cure “studio blindness,” during which I…