The King (detail) |
Paint On The Brain — Patricia Arnold
Writing about my painting experiences
Thursday, March 28, 2024
WOW!!--Lavender oil as a medium!!
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Painting thin lines the easy way
I took the photo of this Rabbit Brush shrub in 2002 on a trip up Hwy 395 to Mammoth Mountain from Ventura County in November. There was fresh snow on the Sierras and the leaves had turned orange and rich red-browns on all the willows and brush in the dry washes that ran from the foothills down into the Owens Valley. I rediscovered it looking through my old photos this fall and decided it was time to try painting it. I had had some practice painting skinny twigs and thought I might be successful this time, but was still very surprised at how well it went.
I've never had much luck painting thin lines with small round brushes, and especially now that my hands shake more than they used to. But what I have found that works is a 3/8-to-1/2" bright brush, synthetic or fine hair, using the long edge and touching it as lightly to the canvas as I can. The paint has to be liquid enough to flow off the brush, and if I make a blob or the line is too thick I swoop in immediately with a clean brush to pick up the extra. The other attribute of a brush this size is that it will hold a fair bit of paint, and it's not too hard to get a nice long line before you run out of paint. Only new or un-frayed narrow-edged brushes will work, and I try to keep a newish one on hand just for this purpose. Once I cover an area with lines I'll usually let them dry before I paint on top them; once I get good ones down, I don't want to risk messing them up.
In the photo, the sand & dirt was covered with a layer of tiny gravel, but I decided that was more texture than the painting needed, and just shaded in the varied grays and tans without offering much detail. Painting the live and dead branches took the most time, as I was trying to capture their varied colors and "bundle" appearance.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Is this what inspiration feels like?
Sunny Afternoon at Horsethief Butte ©2023 |
Monday, September 4, 2023
Every painting a new learning experience
White Salmon River in Husum, WA Oil on canvas panel, 18" x 24" |
On this one I learned how to wipe off oil paint so I could repaint things I didn't like. I tried scraping it off with the palette knife, but I don't use enough paint to scrape off, so I used small cut-up pieces of paper towel, being careful not to scrub so I don't leave paper fibers in the paint. A little bit of turpentine on the towel helps stubborn paint. I always cut up a paper towel into a couple sizes of small scraps and stack them next to the palette on my table. A stack usually last me a few paintings, and they're really handy when I get paint where I don't want it. I also keep a roll of good, sturdy toilet paper there for wiping knives or brushes, or cleaning the palette. Most of the tricks I learned painting in acrylics also work for oils, but I'm having to relearn how to work with slow-drying paint. Sometimes, I just have to wait for it to get tacky--like when I have to rework small detail. The older I get, the more my hand moves in strange ways, and the more blobs I make.
I also got quite a bit of practice on this one doing blending on the canvas, and I recommend the Paint Coach videos on YouTube if you're new to oils. It is definitely easier to lighten than it is to darken something.
One thing I've learned in all these years is that it's REALLY important to have the RIGHT amount of paint in the RIGHT color and the JUST RIGHT consistency, to make a successful brushstroke, no matter what your style is. I guess it's only experience--millions of brushstrokes, or maybe billions--to figure out what that needs to be, every time you pick up your brush. Too much paint, it's a blob, too little, it's a stutter. But in creative hands, even blobs and stutters can make amazing paintings. In any case, I hope to be painting for several more years!
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
I finally found myself a painterly approach
For years I've been trying to loosen up my painting style and stop being locked into a purely realistic approach, and this painting feels to me like my first truly conscious achievement of a naturalistic painting that used brushstrokes as a fundamental element of the design. Participating in the Van Gogh immersive show last year was perhaps the final impetus to making that happen. Having the oil paints with their workability definitely helped.
I used mostly two brushes, a 1/8" flat and a 1/4" bristle bright, and adding a small 1/16" synthetic round for the foreground flowers and grass. Normally I would have switched to the small round to try to get the distant trees to look more like trees, but I've finally accepted that that's not what makes a painting good. What makes a painting look good to me is a good composition, an interesting or pleasing color combination, and some opportunity of mental or emotional connection.
I'm finding that I really enjoy painting the magnificent landscapes of the gorge and I want to paint as many of these beautiful places as I can. Coyote Wall is part of the Washington Syncline, a U-shaped fold with the youngest layers of rock on the inside. The other half of this U is on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. I'm not sure how the wall formed but it looks like a slump/slide to me. It's another famous climbing site, one of several in the Gorge. I took the reference photos in April of 2019, the year of the Balsamroot Superbloom.
It was a bit of a revelation to me when I first brushed in the trees, to find that they looked just like trees to me, and I remembered what I've heard many times from artists I admire that engaging the viewers' own imagination helps them connect with a painting. A realistic or naturalistic painting is an illusion that invokes a response from the viewer, and imagination is what makes that possible. So there's no reason to feel like you have to paint detail, unless you want to.