Project 1: Basic Paint Application Exercise 1 - Getting to Know your Brushes

Oil paints were used throughout this exercise.
a. Acrylic paper, brushes - a mix of  bristle size 8 round, filbert and flats, a 1" flat and paint pushers.
Using different speeds I tried out straight and wavy lines,  dots and dabs, sometimes  twisted, stipples, from light to heavy pressure. In some I used a scrubbing action in others using the edge on the end or the side at various angles. The paint consistency ranges from opaque to transparent, sometimes on well loaded brush, others - a quite dry brush.  Increasing amounts of turps were added until the paint was transparent. Acrylic paper seems okay for oils, some oil soon soaks through to the other side but, as I was later to discover,  this also happens with oil sketching paper.




Primed canvas roll was used for the next three experiments. b. This was again more combinations of techniques, various brushes including synthetic and a fan brush.







c. More experiments with paint pushers here and  synthetic brushes. The hit and miss effect of the paint pusher, I find quite appealing.





d. Varied dilutions of green - warm and cool, mixed from other shades and colours

I couldn't say I preferred any particular effect I tried over another. They would all have their own uses depending on the intended effect.

Whether I could replicate these with acrylic paint
is uncertain unless I try it. The most important thing, I think, would be
to work fast and blend the paint  before the paint dries, especially for wet in
wet techniques. An advantage of acrylic would be the relatively short wait before the
paint dries to paint another layer on top without disturbing the previous paint layer.
Experimental painting in acrylic and inktense blocks.  I did this at a drawing/painting workshop and it was precursor to this first exercise. It was perfect timing for me - just the day before.

The darker shades for these two landscapes evolved from mixtures of blues and earth colours, lightening them with chrome and lemon yellow. A pale gray with white was also used later on the clouds and a touch in the foreground of the first landscape. The second attempt looks fairly unfinished especially in the foreground, where I don't think there's enough contrast, so I intend to go back and sort this out  later. Certain techniques such as pulling and dabbing pale opaque paint over darker shades were amongst some that I managed to bring mind from those above, which I had tried out for the first time. It seemed to work quite well as long as I didn't use too much pressure, otherwise the paint would tend to mix  and muddy with the still wet layer below. I waited for some of the paint in the foreground to dry before adding most highlights as I found if it wasn't dry, that it was sinking into the darker adjacent paint so looking rather non-descript to me. Even now, the trees and bushes are rather too uniformly globular looking.


In this second landscape (right) I used a turpsy rag to blend and remove parts of the sky, and fingers to blend and spread the paint around the back and middleground. I found the side of the tip of a round brush very effective if I pushed it a fraction upwards along the edges of the distant hills to do away with a dark rim previously on the edges. I couldn't help noticing that I began resorting to picking up other colour mixtures off the palette along with the one I had already on the brush. I'm not sure if it's a good  habit. Perhaps it is, providing  mud isn't the result, so I was careful not to over mix on the canvas surface, and it isn't done willy nilly, but rather for a specific purpose. On both paintings, as I progressed towards the foreground I gradually added thicker and warmer shades and hues of paint, yet as I mentioned above, the this one needs further work. Used fast sweeping horizontal strokes across foreground spread across wide.
Being able to continue manipulating the paint, for days sometimes, depending on the colours and mediums used and the atmosphere, is one of the great advantages of oil paint and I was able to wipe off some paint from parts of distant hills without any problem, even when paint was going quite tacky.
Later the same day that I'd painted this  I found it a little disturbing to see a landscape very similar to this connected with a murder investigation on the TV news. This may sound silly, but in some strange way, because of its effect on me I don't want to leave it go unmentioned.
Colours used included mostly: sky - cerulean/cobalt blue and white, distant hills - raw umber/blue, pine trees rhs - viridian/cobalt blue/burnt umber, foreground grasses etc - burnt umber, yellowy green?


The fruit - a nectarine proved more difficult than expected. First I applied a transparent wash of chrome yellow for the ground, then a thicker grey mix from cadmium red, cobalt blue and a little crimson. Using a lighter thicker mix with white I tried to lighten some areas while the underlying paint was still wet but it blended with and darkened the lighter paint.