Storm Ship, oil on board (Daniel Graham)
‘They can be an irritant,’ my grandmother once told me. ‘They take a long time to dry and are difficult to wash off your hands!’
And so, courtesy of my grandmother’s brief angst towards oil paints, I didn’t touch the medium for twenty years. How impressionable children can be.
Yesterday I found some old oil paints in my friend’s paint box.
There’s nothing quite like painting the ocean. I wanted to be on that ship, with the waves crashing overhead and the taste on salt on my tongue, until I remembered my stomach.
I really like this painting. The translucent wave in the foreground and sense of depth is captured well.
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Thank you Maria, I think it’s the light turquoise-white-green-yellow (for want of a better description) that does it!
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Funny…about six years ago? I went out to my shed and opened a box that had oil paints in it and painted a picture of some cows standing in the rain. I was surprised by it. Somehow in the interval since high school and my last oil painting, some 40 years, I’d learned something about painting. I suppose I learned from looking at thousands of paintings in the interval. I was turned off from oil painting by something similar to your grandmother’s words, but I don’t remember what they were. I just remember someone said something trivial like that and I stopped. Oil paints are fun and your painting is beautiful. I like it very much.
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How interesting, Martha. I would love to see the painting of the cows in the rain. And to learn how to paint without painting, that’s an impressive feat!
In some ways my grandmother was right, it does take a long time to dry and is difficult to wash off, but those are it’s qualities.
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I discovered that I like the slow drying time and there have been some paintings that I had a lot of fun working wet on wet finished the whole thing in one whoosh. Here’s my website marthaannkennedy.com I don’t know if the cows are there, but I think so.
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Here they are. http://marthaannkennedy.com/workszoom/1595093
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Lovely painting. You really captured the way cows huddle together very well.
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Thank you!
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So not fair that you could master oils in your first attempt! Lovely 🙂
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Have you tried them, Leah? They are very forgiving and well worth the mess!
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I have tried them Daniel, although I am no painter. I started a Visual Arts course a few years ago, but decided after the first semester it wasn’t something I needed to do, so finished it well short. Anyway, I had fun with the painting but thought acrylics were meant for me, not oils, so I gave the lot away to my Mum who dabbles with painting in the back shed when the mood strikes and the weather is warm enough. 🙂 Leah
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Oh yes, acrylics are nice too, and cheaper! Maybe one day you will pick them up again 🙂
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Love this!
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Thank you very much 🙂
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