So after basically moving all month, and getting things in the new studio and for the most part put away, I finally could turn back to doing a little painting this week! I got my easels set up in the front half of my space in order to take advantage of the beautiful north light that comes in the windows. It is a cool light, and something I'll have to get used to, after literally an entire career of painting indoors with warm spotlights. I've never had a space so naturally light filled. Of course this is mostly the light I paint in outdoors, but there is also a brightness that encompasses everything out there, save for the cloudiest of days. I've added a warm bulb to each of my fluorescent ballasts in the studio as well, just to temper some of that coolness, and it seems to be working out.
The great thing is that I started 2 larger pieces, instead of the 9x12 and 6x8" sizes I'd been working the past several months. Feels good, real good! Hopefully will get these wrapped next week, and can start working up some more relatively large pieces. The boat scene is 22x28" and I'm gong with a more naturalistic piece in the 24x30" size. Both are in progress and oil on oil primed linen... Which is another thing on which I've come to a conclusion. I think I have struggled mightily in the last year or so because I got away from painting on oil primed canvas. For me, the paint is much harder to get off of the brush and on the canvas if there isn't the oil priming. It seems to drag and then sink into the surface of the acrylic canvases. I end up having to work over the painting too many times to get the density I like, and end up with a choked surface and a dead piece. Many paintings that could have been good had to be scrapped because of this... lesson learned! So the tip of the day is to paint on a surface that keeps the paint sitting up on it, instead of sinking in. It's slickness might take some getting used to, but the results are so worth it to me!
