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.

Recovering the Joy of Oil Paints

Catnap

A few weeks ago, a friend gifted me with a full set of Oil Paints that her son no longer wanted, and got me painting with them again! I had switched to acrylics because in the predominantly wet weather here in Beavercreek, they were taking more than a week to dry. This was before Alkyd paints were popular, and I'd had enough of water-miscible oils that I wasn't going to mess with that any more. But a few years ago I got a heat pump, and it keeps the humidity inside low enough that they dry in about half the time they used to. And I'd been thinking about wanting to get back into them since last fall, but was dissuaded by the cost of buying a good big set.

So I picked up some turpenoid products and spent a couple hours watching The Paint Coach on YouTube, and started my first painting. I picked the most complicated composition I'd ever tried, which was a mistake, and it took me almost 4 weeks to get it to an acceptable state, but I'm working on a second one that should be a lot more fun and relaxed. I'm wanting to play with them more, try out some new techniques, and just relish the gooiness and pleasures of oils.

One thing I've really missed with acrylics is the possibilities of brushstrokes! It's really fun to use brushstroke to mimic actual texture in the subject, or to add structure to the painting as a whole by changing how a particular part of the composition reflects the light or attracts the eye of the viewer. Think of Van Gogh's brushstrokes. Ever since I was immersed in the superb Van Gogh show and display last year, I have repeatedly enjoyed strong visual memories of how persuasive his sculptural brushstrokes are, how they attract attention and reinforce both the colors and designs he created. I wasn't able to do use brushstrokes in this painting, I was too overwhelmed by working on an intimidating combination of unfamiliar subjects—the person, the cat and the fabric--but I'm trying to use them in the painting currently on my easel—a landscape of the famous Coyote Wall in the Columbia Gorge. I'm sure it'll take me some time to get used to thinking about every single brushstroke as I load the brush and apply the paint, but it's a skill I look forward to getting good at.

One creative choice I did manage to assert in this painting was to eliminate two thirds of the stripes on this duvet. Putting them in would have added another month or two to the painting time, and given the shakiness of my hands these days, would have made it a lot more chaotic and difficult to look at.