Success!

For months I have been attempting to make my own oil paints - with utter failure!  I think I now have many formulas for non-drying paint!

But, the last two months, I have been rethinking my approaches.  They were close but something had gone terrible wrong with the drying process.  Sigh.

Today, quite unexpectedly, I ran five quite different attempts and two of them were complete successes.  The best is exactly what I was looking for but the paint drys far darker than anticipated.  The second one did not treat granulating pigments nicely, but did work.  Of the other three, they took longer to dry with distinct color shifts towards yellow - and none of them were based on Linseed Oil!

Needless to say, I am excited with my playing and perhaps there is my first oil painting in decades awaiting ...

Comparison

I was trying to think of something I could paint with a little free time I had and could not come up with a single idea.  Talk about uninspired!  So, I was leafing through my earlier attempts and hit on the idea of redoing one of them.

I liked my first beach scene and so it was easy to decide to see how much I have learned since I did that first one.

Still a long ways to go but it is better than the first attempt.

Summer Garden

My instructor had us do a flower garden.   It is fitting that in the dull grayness of winter something bright and cheerful is called for!

Actually, the exercise was on the various techniques of masking.  The fence was done with masking tape, which was then lifted and I filled in some shadow and painted vines to make it look a little more normal.

The bird house was done with maskoid which is then lifted with a rubber crepe and then painted.

The sky I played with various colors to see how the paint would move - wet on wet, wet on dry, wet on damp, etc.  Ha-Ha, so horrible but it is a learning experience after-all.

Cardinal

Another wintery scene, but then again it is winter time, so to be expected.

I took a special one day painting class to learn about washes and layering of color in order to do this bird.  Would you believe that there are 15 layers of red paints in this bird - each just a little darker?

The effect this makes is hardly shown in this scan but it is quite an intriguing effect in person.

But, I was to learn about the concept of glazing and ponder how to apply this to my painting attempts.

Fence Line

Another wintery painting this time of a fence line.  Just a chance to practice working with some trees, snow and perspective on the fence.

Important for me to learn was that nothing is "perfect" in nature. So fences are not straight, posts are not spaced evenly. And I threw in a broken segment just to accentuate this.

Simple but I liked this one, mostly for its sky.

Another future Christmas Card.

Cabin In The Snow

I like the approach this new instructor takes.  She has us do a project in every class and we can "customize" the picture as much as we want.

Here, I finally learned how to do a tree!  I was so excited!  To bad I had already finished with the Creede picture.  Oh well.

I used this one as a Christmas card I liked it so much.

Creede 23 - Nelson Tunnel Ore Bin

So, it only took me 23 attempts across the weekend to be able to come up with a mountain I liked and the background mining scene as it is in real life.  Hence, I went forward with the Nelson Tunnel Ore Bin structure.

I was very happy with the over all effect, however, there were a few whoopsies along the way, so I covered them up with my best attempt at trees.

I like everything, except the trees!

Oh well, at least I am proud of this one.