Tag: watercolor

Argh! Midlife crisis!

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I jest, I jest.

Well, maybe I have a little midlife crisis.  I’m about to…. (drumroll please) switch from acrylics to oils.

It happened like this.  Due to the neighbor problems that caused me to buy a house in the first place, I hadn’t felt much like painting in quite a while.  Who knew acrylics can go bad inside a sealed tube?  When I was transferring my stuff from apartment to house, I realized that nearly every tube and bottle of acrylic paint was lumpy, half coagulated, and resistant to re-mixing.

ART DISASTER.

Or is it?

Living in this house with all its possibilities has caused me to think a little more creatively – and since I’ve always wanted to try painting with oils, and have rediscovered the wet on wet painting technique via Bob Ross, why not replace my acrylics with oils?

Problem solved, opportunity found.

The cost is a little higher, yes, okay maybe a lot higher, but like the watercolors and colored pencils I used on the greeting card you see above, oil paints take a lot more punishment before going bad.

For cleaning I am going to use orange oil (similar properties as lavender spike oil, used by artists before turpentine was common) and for those really hard jobs, stinky mineral spirits.  I don’t want to use odorless mineral spirits because most of the danger is still there without the warning signs.  This will be supplemented by an open window, and open door, and an exhaust fan in my study/studio.

Some of my brushes will still work.  My canvasses can be reused.  Same with my gesso.  I think this will be an interesting adventure, and hopefully start a love affair with oils.

So there you have it… my version of a midlife crisis.

 

Latest Commission

Tips for Artists

kathy bike 1500.jpg

It’s a great thing to finally have a dedicated room for art that I don’t also have to share with a bunch of household storage, odds and ends, the family vacuum cleaners and I don’t know what all.

Having everything close to hand makes me want to be more productive!  This was a small commission for a family member, who wanted an old style girl’s Schwinn with a basket of flowers on the front.  I found a photo of an old Phantom and did what I could.

For those who are interested, I used hot rolled watercolor paper, then sketched the frame and details with a mechanical pencil.  Very lightly, of course.  I did some of the shading with the mechanical pencil and finalized the lines.  I put on the color with wax based colored pencils, then made the background with some washes, and finished everything with an ultra fine manga style ink marker.

I hope my client likes it – there are things I could improve but all in all it’s all right.  The details are a little rough because of the small scale, which is roughly 8 1/2 by 11.