mixing grays and blacks in oil paint

Vogue Series 7


I started this painting by blocking in the large shapes in the general color.

Limbs Venetian Red, Naples yellow, Titanium white and the dress pink.

The back round is a mixed gray. I hardly ever use gray or black from a tube these days.

It helps me to squint while looking at the reference photo, this makes everything blurry. If I just paint the blur I won’t get hung up on the details to early.

At this stage I just want to capture the gesture.

I'll let it dry now and move on to something else.

Vogue Series Oil Painting

Vogue Series 5

So I stuck with painting number 5 for a while adding some interest with color and fluffing up that hair a little. I’ll stop here for now, when I come back I'll tighten up her face and hand.

Mixing Black in Oil Paints

Vogue Series 5

I went back into painting number 5 and tried to render the light in a more dramatic fashion.

I mixed my blacks from Phthalo green, Napthol Red, Phthalo blue, Burnt Sienna and Quinacridone Megenta.

Shadows help add dimension in oil painting

Vogue Series 4

I went back into painting number 4 with a clear idea as to what I wanted to do.

I wanted the dress to be abstract and for the shadows to add dimension making the figure pop off the white backround.

I’ll put it aside at this point and contemplate if I should go further adding detail to the face or leave it vague. In the mean time I’ll start working on another painting.

Multiple oil paintings with little pressure

Vogue Series 6

When I get to this point I just stop and start another painting, or go back and work on an earlier one. Feeling no pressure to add detail or fuss with it at this stage.

Vogue oil painting in progress

Vogue series 6

Blocking in general colors.

Recycling used canvases

Vogue Series 6

You may be able to tell from this shot that I’ve been recycling used canvases. I’ve been doing it for all the paintings in this series. I just find an old painting I hate and smooth it out a little with the palm sander (80 grit paper ). Once in a while I’ll leave in a little texture from the old painting just to add some interest.

Oil painting working wet on wet with liquin

Vogue Series 3

After this painting was dry I coated the whole canvas with liquin and jumped back into it, working wet on wet.

Oil Painting Vogue Series

Vogue Series 5

This gesture painting was completed in about 20 minuets. I quickly put it to the side to dry and went back to working on painting number 3. When I felt things were slowing down on number 3, I moved it out of the way and started a new painting. I’m trying my best to avoid procrastination and maintain spontaneity.

Vogue Series number 4 Oil Painting

Vogue Series number 4

Again I started this painting very quickly , mixing a few left over colors from the last painting to making a gray. Nothing fancy here just a rough sketch to get things going. Now I’ll let it dry and move on the another painting.

Quickly roughed in the gesture of oil painting

Vogue Series number 3

I quickly roughed in the gesture then blocked in the general colors of another oil painting today, but before I got into any detail. I put it aside and started another painting.

The art of overcoming procrastination

Vogue Series number 2

Day two I started another painting.

I’ll let the first one dry and come back to it with fresh eyes but for now I just want to move on.

I’ll take this second painting as far as I can go but before I start procrastinating too much on what to do with it, I’ll start another one.

Sort of like and assembly line, add a part and move on.

Oil Painting, A New Direction

Vogue Series number 1

In an attempt to take my work in a new direction I’ve decided to start a series of paintings to explore the figure, gesture, foreshortening ,color, and painterly brush strokes.

Using the Vogue Model as my subject I’ll work crudely at first to capture the gesture’ then move on to the next painting. I’ll continue this process till I have many paintings going on at once, stopping when I get stuck on one and moving on to the next avoiding procrastination.

Hopefully with this process I’ll be able to increase my volume of work while maintaining a high quality.

I’ll set no time limits for this series because lets face it shit happens, but I will commit to it and log in as many hours in front of the easel as possible.

From time to time I'll stop to post pictures and explain the pace and process of my work.

This first painting was quickly started in class, after a few hours of work I put it aside and went on to the next.

Still life in progress

This is a still life that I started in class and continued to work on at home from a reference photo I took .

I wanted to have less negative space in this painting so I adjusted the composition a little by cropping out the flowers from the white & blue vase along with altering its opening from the original.

I have the green vase going off the left side of the canvas to suggest it’s mass, as I didn’t want this to be the perfect still life where everything fits on the canvas perfectly.

I’m experimenting with an additional element in this painting in an attempt to create a feeling of movement. I’m still not sure how far I’m going to go with the white moths but I loosely added them into the scene to see what they would add to the piece. Eventually I’ll add more detail to them and I’m considering having them hover all around the angel figure.

Kitten study, oil painting

I worked on this kitten study a little more just to finish it off. I haven’t painted someone else’s work in a while, but I feel its necessary from time to time to not only study the methods of accomplished oil painters, but to practice mimicking there techniques on canvas. I feel it helps me to get inside there thought process of applying the paint to canvas. Perhaps its similar a student guitar player practicing Smoke on the Water. It's not always as hard as it looks you just have to practice practice practice.

Finding a balance between life and creating art.

After raking leaves in the yard for most of the day I found myself to worn out to paint....So feeling a little guilty about that I got to wondering, just how do some people stay motivated to paint on a regular basis?

I see some artist on line producing a staggering amount of work and I ‘d like to know the secret..... what the hell keeps them going? Don’t they ever get tired or stressed out ? I wonder if these people have day jobs ?

I worked on my truck for one whole weekend and that was enough to put a lid on the oil painting for the whole week. If I have a bad day at work ....forget about it, can’t paint. I like to stay in shape so after a good work out , trail run or mountain bike ride I’m usually to keyed up or to beat down to pick up a paint brush. Then there’s the cooking, cleaning and fixing everything that breaks around this old house...it never ends.

There are times when I just can’t find the balance between oil painting and staying afloat. I can’t even begin imagine how people with children do it.

I look forward to the day when I can focus all my time and energy on my art, but in the mean time, I’ll just have to keep looking for that perfect balance between life and creating art.