Just Call Me "Rusty"

Well, since I last posted I have left my job and am now devoting all my efforts to painting. Obviously I have a lot of work to do! It's been 4 months since I've even touched a brush...first because of my back injury (which is better but still doesn't feel right), then because of the backlog of work that accumulated. Took me a few days to get the art room and supplies organized, but now I'm pretty much done with that. Time to put them to use!

On Friday I broke out the gouache and did a couple of "car paintings". Very rusty (I won't show them). Later in the day I dragged out the oil paints and did a couple of very small studies...partly just to get the feel of painting again, partly to try out a new canvas. Those studies won't ever be seen either! However, in the interest of almost full disclosure, I'll post the two I did yesterday. The first is an 8x10 oil painting, painted on site. It was great just being out there on a sunny, mild (35 deg or so) February day, listening to the creek and the birds. As for the painting, well I kinda missed with this one. It looked pretty decent outside in the bright light, but indoors it's rather dull and lacks contrast. I had lots of trouble overlaying tree trunks and branches onto wet paint, ran out of paper towels...as I said, rusty! But I like the scene and think I'm going to re-do the painting in the studio, to figure out where I went wrong. I think that's going to be the biggest benefit to having more time for this - the opportunity to try new things, solve problems, and not always feel rushed.

The second one is a simple study of a radish. It's also oil, 5x7, and painted on gesso'd mat board. This surface is very slippery and now I remember why I stopped painting on it...the first layer of paint slips all over the place and is hard to paint over. I eventually managed to make it work reasonably well. I'm planning to do a lot of these small, simple studies to improve my skills.

I'm also planning to post more often - at least once a week for now; more often when I start doing decent paintings again. Hopefully that won't take too long! Stay tuned as the journey begins...