Down on Prospect Avenue? Prospect Avenue? Prospect? Down on Prospect? The latter is the name I plan to stick with. This painting is almost finished. My habit is to put away an almost-done painting and leave it alone until I can see it with fresh eyes. One or two more sessions should be enough. …
I am happy with my painting medium, as I’ve written before, but I also like to kick the tires of new offerings. I wrote about my use of Grove’s Cole’s medium several times, noting how that the more I used it, the less I liked it. Eventually, I put it aside, storing it in the…
For today’s session with Lunch Alone, in addition to my usual medium, I used ‘flavored’ turpentine for my solvent: turpentine with some homemade drying oil, plus drops of Courtrai siccative. Readers of my blog know I post a lot about mediums and other arcane elements of art making. If you want to start experimenting with mediums,…
Painting Tom is a short film by Jake Harness. Jake is a young filmmaker and Painting Tom is part of his documentary on creative people.
To my suprise, I enjoyed the experience. Painting Tom is, as you might guess, about me painting.
How do you know when a painting is finished?Many artists have trouble determining when a painting is finished. It can be excruciatingly painful to let a painting go, especially after you worked on it for a long time. If like me, you focus on problems as you work, it can be easy to fixate on…
I used my homemade drying oil in recent sessions with Down on Prospect Avenue. I substitute the oil for black oil in my medium recipe. Large paintings (Down on Prospect Avenue is 44″ x 60″) have issues that smaller ones don’t have. Matching tones previously used, to name just one. Anyway, it’s getting there. It’s…
Homemade drying oil.The crude container that I made with a lead sheet contains 16 oz. of cold-pressed walnut oil. I’ll leave the oil in the container for several months before straining it into a jar, like the one in the upper-left of the photo. The lead imparts drying qualities to the oil making it excellent…
The thing about this Fabriano drawing pad is I can work-up drawings with pencil or pen–my two favorite materials–without mess or fuss. The really good paper I save for charcoal or pastel, but this paper is terrific for pencil drawing. This photo shows two recent pencil drawings on Fabriano bristol. This morning, I finished a…