Mini Home Studio Vacation

My week off from my full time job is almost over! I've been busy painting, below are a couple more:

 And my recent shipment of Rosemary & Co, Ivory flat brushes! I'd purchased a variety pack in the spring, and found I really love the Ivory series, so decided to order more in a few sizes. I really enjoy these while painting the last layers of a painting and/or for working on architecture.

Cottage at St. Fillans

I took this week off from work and am determined to spend lots of time in the studio with oil paints. Although I've been working on using the palette knife, today's painting was done with brushes.

I've always shied away from painting architecture because it is time consuming, and I always feel like if I can't paint it exactly, I've failed. It's hard to paint straight lines with brushes! I was struggling a bit with that, when I picked up one of my Rosemary Ivory flat brushes. I found this was a great brush for straight edges - and wished I had a few more sizes, so when I took a break, I got online and ordered a few more.

Process shots follow. I learned something after I'd used a dark purple heavy lines to sketch in my composition. I should have used a thinner brush and paint, in a medium value. It threw off my color palette and my values.

 I had a hard time getting the correct temperature for the buildings.

 I decided to make some piles of paint mixtures so I would have a variety. I have been studying David Curtis of the UK, and used his color choices of Ultramarine, Cerulean, Lemon Yellow, Naples yellow deep, Burnt Sienna, Cad Orange, Cad Red, and Violet (I had Cad Violet instead of Cobalt violet).

A nice variety of greys.

I worked on this painting continuously most of the day which is a long time for me, since I usually can only work on a painting for a couple hours at a time, due to working full time.

 Struggling with those colors on the cottage, so wiped that out and decided to get the first layers down on the scenery first.

 Then on to the cottages. Still struggled with the real colors shown in the photograph - so changed it a bit to darker colors on the buildings on the left. Had a lot of issues trying to get that building to look correct.

 Got it to this stage and said I'd had enough. Way too complicated. I like more simple compositions!

St. Fillans Cottages, 9x12, oil on Centurion OP linen

Foxglove at Loch Earn

Here's another palette knife painting I finished today. This is a view at Loch Earn in Scotland. I took several photos and decided to combine and delete to suit my new composition.

Process shots:

 I put the big bush in on the left, but really hated it, so took it out.

Started filling in the ground foliage. The area in the middle needed opened up so below shows after I added more of the water color there. I let it setup for a couple days before I worked more weeds over top of that area without closing it up too much.

Foxglove at Loch Earn, oil on OP Centurion linen, 8x12"

Finishing Up an Oil Painting

I've been taking a class at the MAC on using the palette knife for an oil painting. We've had two classes so far, and five more to go. I have used the knife in the past, but felt I needed to put a bit more effort into it with different shaped knives. I've been in a bit of a creative slump this year, and now it's time to get out of that by taking a class! I feel I made some advancements in technique, especially today, on how I use the knife to pickup paint.

I do believe this is finished and I am pretty happy with it! I used a photo from my trip to Scotland.

View to the Meadow, 9x12", oil on gesso'd board

Saturday Studio Work - Dessert

I finally was able to spend some time in my studio this weekend. To get back in the swing of things, I picked a photo of one of the fancy desserts we were served on my Scotland trip:

I needed to get away from all the greens of landscapes. I painted this in pastels on a rougher grit of white sanded paper. I think this was 320 grit Pastel Premier - a bit too rough for me, but I worked with it. Here's the finished painting:

"Dessert", 5x7, pastel on 320 grit Pastel Premier