Planning a Painting: Edges and Padding

My first stage in planning a painting is staring at a rectangle for a while. Usually, this is in a sketch book, and then I cover it with marks. What I am doing is working out where bits of the

Buying Frames in Bulk

Over the weekend, there was a sale of frames from Frameworks, made by John Caldwell. A frame is not usually part of my commissioning process, because different clients have different styles and like to do their own framing. At the

A Look At: Kyle Thomas, Delft Bottle

Or, what I bought on my holidays At Christmas, I bought myself an art work by Kyle Thomas, an American artist. He has a loose style of painting, and I wanted to see this one up close. I felt I

How To: Deal with Sunken Oil Paintings

When an oil painting is finished, it’s not finished; an artist still has to do a few things. The first challenge is that some paintings ‘sink’, losing their freshly painted look. Areas can go dull, as the oil retreats from

Still Life, Roses and Reflections: Day 5

Today’s painting was an attempt to finish the leaves, after a morning spent on a commission project. I had about five hours left in the afternoon, so I used those, adding the green leaves, smoothing out a few painting errors

A Look At: My Studio

Oil painting is slow, and takes up room, and after an attempt to do it in my kitchen was vetoed, I had to find a studio. I joined a set of artists working out of a near-derelict building, on a

Still Life, Roses and Reflections: Day 4

Today I hoped to get the stems and leaves moulded, on the first layer. After a bit of colour selection I came up with a mix that was largely opaque for the leaves, meaning that the top layer will almost