When I paint, it is usually with a large flurry of paint, gesture, mark-making. It doesn’t matter sometimes what comes first so it is okay to just let loose with acrylic
Then there are those other times when you have to slow down………..and that is not a bad thing. Oil painting is one such process. I have to slow down, look more, think more.
That has been the case with the last two paintings I started on at the same time. One is still waiting for more judgement. This one is progressing to the point I can show it. It may not be totally finished. Sometimes there is a little more finesse needed in the paint surface, or a dark or a line to be made that I will discover a little later. I have even turned it all around………it could be hung in about any direction, especially since it is a square.
The final title will be determined when I am sure, but it is another painting in my Annotation Series begun earlier this year.
Here are the three stages I photographed as time went past.
1st stages
2nd stages, 36 x 36 oil on wood panel
3rd and maybe final image, 36 x 36 oil on wood panel
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Absolutely beautiful.
Thank you, Terisia.
I LOVE the first stage. While it doesn’t have (what I call) the ‘intellectual depth’ of the final work, it is spontaneous, lively, and colourful. I often feel that way about my own first stages, and miss them when they’re gone.
Jo, I know what you mean about those first fresh stages. I had to wait over a week before jumping back in.
What a lively surface! How do you manage to layer so quickly over the oils? I tried that once and had to wait almost a month for the first layer to be dry enough. If I recall correctly, you used to use acrylics as well, right? What made you change? Oh, and thanks for sharing your work and process.
Hello Donna, I still use acrylic and enjoy working with encaustic (hot wax and pigment) but all of this painting is oil. How ??…using very thin applications of oil mixed with cold wax medium. Although, for me, it doesn’t dry any faster, it allows me to layer without each layer becoming muddy. Not that you can’t get it to mix, it just help to keep the layering separated. That said, the slow drying pigments will still get too wet for some applications. I use…brayers, and squeegee type applicators more than brushes…although in some areas I still use brushes.
I notice a lot of people calling their paintings ‘oil and cold wax’…but I don’t. I just say oils because sometimes people are confused about cold wax (just an oil painting medium) and encaustic which is a totally different process using heat.