A reader said he tried sun-thickened oil on my recommendation but it didn’t demonstrate the handling quality that I’d claimed for it. Sun-thickened oil has the happy quality of maintaining body even when thinned, or so I claimed. My correspondent said his paint was rather more transparent than usual; he’d expected the opposite. First, as…
I finished the underpainting today for Portrait of a Man Wearing Sunglasses, my second session with the painting. The painting is 32″ x 48.” Simple composition. Unlike last week’s Fork, I transferred the design to the canvas with a cartoon. For Fork, because it’s so large, I drew directly on the canvas then inked over…
Yesterday, Lake Erie exhibited the sluggishness that precedes freezing, and this morning we see the frozen tundra. The winds calmed but the wind chill is below zero. I am a little under the weather today–a good day to stay inside. I finished Keep Talking yesterday.
Booth at the Fair ( or At the Fair or The Fair) is 44″ x 60,” which makes it one of the larger canvases I’ve worked on recently. I am working on the drawing for a larger canvas–54″ x 66.” I also have a passel of 48″ x 60″ canvases waiting for attention. So much…
So you’ve embraced the two related studio aphorisms I discussed in this recent post: fat over lean, and make the lights thick but keep the darks thin. In practical terms what does this mean? Oil paint, tube paint, is stiff and unmalleable. Adding oils and solvents to the paint makes it manageable. But these additions…
Art is filled with aphorisms. Fat over lean, for instance, is a famous adage. The meaning for this old saw that is the most straightforward is to paint thickly-applied paint over thinly-applied paint. Why this distinction? Well, if you paint in layers, that is, if you paint over previously painted areas, you ignore this practice…
This was the first Christmas when our children didn’t wake at dawn. My youngest, home from his Freshman year at college, didn’t get up until lunchtime! So we had a leisurely morning around the stout Christmas tree. The tree, besides being too wide, was too tall for the living room but we managed. That’s our…
David Davis was an art supply dealer in New York. He closed before the turn of the century–well before, so I have no idea how old this Venice turpentine I found this morning is. At least 20 years old. At one time, Peal Paint and David Davis where art supplier royalty in NYC. I spent…