The growing wall in my studio of small oil painting on paper and canvas. Sort of sketches for larger pieces, mostly color and composition studies.

Stage 6: Lightning Phase

Really liking the lines in the previous stage, I decided to focus on that section. Boy, was that torturous. I didn't have the right motivation to even be in the studio and my head just wasn't working but I kept painting and rubbed the oil sticks all over that damn canvas.

After much frustration, I'm okay with where it's going, just not totally where it's at.

I do love the colors in the top left section and hope to bring some more of that to the upper portion as well as more contrast and drawing. It's not anywhere near what I was thinking it would be but I have to remember to stop thinking and just work.

Onward...

in progress

another in progress

Working in the studio again and the weather has been so nice that I'm able to open the windows and bust out the oil paint! This is making me immensely happy! I haven't used my oil paint for quite some time and have really been feeling the need to use them again. I've been using casein and some acrylic for the better part of 2 years now. I really love working with casein but wanted the luminosity and thickness of oil for the ideas I'm trying to work through. But I'm not abandoning casein, by any means. In fact, both of these painting have a casein underpainting. Technically, the green one has a casein underpainting and the gray one is an oil painting over a half finished casein painting that wasn't quite making the grade. But I used it as an underpainting of sorts.

new toys: old Grumbacher oil paint, giant tubes of Sennelier, and Shiva Paintstiks

The mark/drawing are made using Shiva Paintstiks, which are pigment compacted into a stick form with a minimal amount of linseed oil and wax.

I had been taking a break from the studio after a long productive time working on the CSA project. I needed to redirect my mind and figure out what's next. When I go through this process, I usually think back to things I know and how I studied art ... figure drawings, self portraits, still lives ... but I didn't necessarily want to take that route. So, instead, I thought OIL! Digging through my oil supplies, I found some really old tubes of Grumbacher paint that were given to me; the colors are not my typical color palette (there were mostly Thalo greens and blues) so I thought it would be the perfect way to open up and try something new. As you can see in the green painting above, I had fun using them and think I'll definitely add them into the normal rotation.

To celebrate the release of my new oil paint making tutorial-- I'm putting it on sale for a limited time for $2 -- you can't beat that with a stick (unless you are cruel).  

Still working on my oil paint making tutorial.  I'm having fun typing this up and am looking forward to releasing it!  Head is a bit spinny today, much like this paint, so I don't have much to report on-- Off to bed to feel better for tomorrow.