July 19, 2015

A couple of smaller pieces this week:

Joseph Joseph, Jul 13, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 12″ X 12″

The Joseph Joseph utensils were painted over an old acrylic painting that was fairly flat, but still had some lumpiness to it. My intention was to keep the brushstrokes rough and simple. I used fairly strong lighting on it and was painting practically in the dark. I didn’t realize until later how dark it really was. I was using quite a lot of linseed oil and had horrible issues with glare from my easel lamp making it a frustrating painting experience. And now I’m on a quest for much better lighting for my easel.

I took on the Mickey bottle stopper quite spontaneously. I had planned to paint some colour swatches of some of my blues with white and black and when I finished that, I just kept going. I recently bought a couple of 8″ X 8″ Gessobords from Ampersand to see what I thought of them. I restricted myself to Payne’s Grey, Titanium White and a bit of Mars Black. Again, my goal was to paint quickly to keep my brush strokes fresh and not get bogged down by detail. Not a bad result. Of course I could pick it apart in a second, but overall I’m satisfied with it. And I have decided that I much prefer the texture and springiness of stretched canvas over this hard, slightly textured Gessobord. I have one more of them and will try again – perhaps my opinion will change after another try.