Oil painting

I took up oil painting in November 2017. I know no-one reads blogs these days but I realised a little while ago that I needed somewhere to record the things I've learned along the way, as I did with my colour pencil drawings. It was handy to look back and see which colours I had used on a particular drawing. Having tried and failed to remember a colour mix recently I thought now is a good time to pick up the habit again.

The painting of Paul, above, is my first 'proper' portrait with oils. It started with a layer of Burnt Sienna mixed with turps and spread thinly. The general face shape was pulled out of the still wet layer with a rag and then a block of cool colours laid down.

Over the course a few weeks I worked on this very much guided by my excellent teacher. It was quite an eye opener learning about colour vibration as well as all the new techniques I needed to learn in order to handle oils. At first I really struggled with the brushes and supports. I've discovered I don't like hog brushes at all and just lately, apart from that first thin layer, I don't use turps either.

I had a few hit and misses along the way, mainly because I was working in larger sizes than I'm comfortable with. Paul is 12"x16" and that felt pretty large to me.

This fox skull was the next painting I was happy with, going smaller at 7"x 9 1/2". My teacher, James Waller, really helped me to see the colours in what looked to me like a washed out white skull. The background was fun to work on too, picking out warm and cool colours there with natural light coming in from a window on the left. Keeping things quite loose and then adding the finest details right at the end really worked for this one. I definitely felt more comfortable after experimenting with a few brushes and finding some I liked. It wasn't until I heard about Rosemary & Co brushes that I found the ones I really loved. I will post a photo of those in another blog post.