Worked on many areas of Landscape 8. None of it is finished but it’s pretty close.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Sunday, January 28, 2024
I finally glazed the linen in two of the still life paintings. After this dries I’ll paint the linen highlights again and after that dries I’ll glaze it again. Might have to do this several times. The Old Masters might have 60 layers of paint, glaze, paint, glaze… The same goes for the bottles except the final stage of the bottles will be opaque highlights and the final stage of the linen will be a thin glaze of brown.
Yesterday I glued my new canvas to the 16 x 20 cradled wood panels. Turned out great. The photo is a little lesson on linear perspective. There are a couple of ways to create depth. One is linear perspective. The other is atmospheric perspective. With atmospheric perspective, colors get duller and things get fuzzier as they get farther away. If you were standing at a street corner with a stop sign right next to you and could see the stop sign on the next corner, linear perspective would make the stop sign on the next corner look smaller, and atmospheric perspective would make it a duller red and not sharply focused.
Friday, January 26, 2024
Worked on Landscape 6. Tomorrow I’ll work on the tree and bush trunks. Right now they are just a flat brown right out of the tube. There’s still work to be done on the foliage but not much.
I’ve been looking for the perfect surface to paint on, preferably a fine textured canvas or linen. Canvas is cotton. Linen is flax. A fine linen is great but very expensive. An 18″ x 42″ fine weave, oil-primed, sample piece of linen is $50. A 72″ x 18′ roll of the same linen is $660. I took a chance and ordered a 72″ x 30′ roll of triple acrylic primed fine canvas for $138. I received it last night and it’s great! $138 for 180 square feet of a fine textured canvas.
The problem with acrylic priming is it will absorb some oil out of the oil paint. Also, it’s better to paint on a surface that isn’t a bright white. I have a tub of non-absorbent, light tan acrylic primer I will paint the canvas with before starting a painting. So tomorrow I will glue two pieces of my new canvas to the two 16″ x 20″ panels on the table. Then I’ll prime the canvas with the primer in the photo below. That will be the surface I will paint on from now on. Fine canvas glued to panels and then primed with toned, non-absorbent acrylic primer.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Worked on the clouds of Landscape 4. They will need more work.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Worked on all areas of Landscape 3 the last couple of days. I finally decided on a sky for this painting. This is the first step of the sky. The white clouds will go up higher after this layer dries. The corn-covered hill in the foreground will be a challenge. The hill goes down towards the dirt road. The trick will be to paint each corn stalk in detail making them them smaller as they go down the hill.
Monday, January 15, 2024
Worked on Still Life 2 for about four hours. The red apples still need a little work along with some details and corrections in other areas.
Saturday, January 13, 2024
Worked on Landscape 2. Almost have the base layer of the mountain where I want it. Will probably paint the base layer of the mountain one more time before I add some details. This mountain is worn so the edges are subtle which makes it difficult for me. Maybe in a year, it will be easier.
Friday, January 12, 2024
Worked on the blue sky, middle ground, and foreground of Landscape 4. A while ago I made corrections to the blue sky which I thought blended in with the original blue. A week ago I took a photo of this painting. In the photo, the corrections showed up as halos around clouds so this morning I repainted the blue. There is work to do on the middle ground and foreground, especially the large bushes.
Winter is finally here. The next few days will be snowy and cold but we like it as long as we don’t have to shovel it and the driving isn’t dangerous.
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Worked on the middle and foreground of Landscape 7. I’ll pretty much finish this painting the next time I work on it. The three distant greenish hills need to be toned down. The trees and bushes need to be finished up and the clouds, especially the tall cloud in the middle, need a little work.
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Worked on the middle and foreground of Landscape 6. The trees and bushes need a lot of work but this painting will be finished soon. Again, the clouds in the three colorful landscapes are not meant to be realistic. They are dramatic and slightly abstract.
