My Oil Painting and other Musings

On December 24th last year I posted on this blog about my new hobby, Oil Painting. You can read that blog post here. Due to our traveling in the winter and the beautiful Tupelo weather and other pursuits like sewing new dresses and making some baby quilts, I took a several month break from painting. Being here in rainy Portland, and spending so much time inside, has given me an opportunity to get back to this fun pastime of mine. 

Here are a few of the paintings I have done since moving here. 

I keep practicing my seascape. I gave up on the big rock and decided to put an Oregon Pine tree in it's place. We saw so many trees like this on our trip to the coast.

 Darryl liked this one so much that he framed it and put it on the wall.

Next I tried a mixed medium painting with a gesso monochromatic background.  

You 'splotch' in your light source on a black canvas using a paper towel.

When the background has dried you add trees, shrubs and grass using the black, white and gray gessos.

After that has completely dried you put a colorwash over it using transparent oil paints.

This was such a fast and easy painting to do that I ended up doing five in total. I did an entire 4 seasons set.

It was quite a fun project and I may actually do more of these.

We put the original Autumn woods picture in a new frame and it really stands out. This was the 3rd oil painting I ever painted. I have tried to recreate it several times. One of them was pretty good and I gave it away. The rest I have scraped off and will try, try again.  

Last week I tried another seascape, changing up the direction of the waves and finally getting a decent rock in the picture.

The paints are all put away until after Christmas as there is no room for the easel AND the tree. But come January I have many more projects in my mind I want to try. Painting is challenging for me but very relaxing too. I look at it as one big learning process. So what if I goof up and have to scrape a canvas off. The good thing is no one is grading me and I learn from every mistake I make. I also know that with each correction I make, I am becoming better at what I do. Funny how that works. ;-)
Check out my art blog at: cindysueart.blogspot.com