General Chat - June 2010

Dale your paintings are always great. The one thing I have started doing is painting form the computer image rather than the print out. I can tweak it to what I want and then paint from there. print outs never come out looking the same.

My son just sent me a fantastic photo he took in Yellowstone National Park last week. It is definitely booked as my next painting.

judy

well I sold my St George painting for $450 so part goes to art supplies and I will put some away for my own laptop. Plus the buyer is considering commissioning me to paint another - much larger painting. He is a collector and has all sorts of fabulous art on his walls so I feel a bit overawed by it all.

Congratulations, Dale!

That's wonderful! You really deserve it, Dale.

Dayle

Thanks so much. it is exciting. And i am loooking forward to painting another piece for him, if he decides he wants to commission one. He lives on the river with a beautiful view and he wants it a long narrow landscape. I have always wanted to try that format.

Congratulations Dale! I agree you deserve it!

Callie, thank you for the tip for painting from a photo! We live up north and you are welcome to visit at any time. It's hot but not oppressively hot. I hope the weather turns for you soon.

Judy, I can't wait to see what you do with your reference of Yellowstone National Park.

Had my second visit with the chiropractor yesterday and my back and neck are feeling much better. I'll get started on my palette knife painting today.

Dale, great to hear of the sale of the St George painting! My family is from there, and my grandfather had worked in the pulp mill...

Do you frame your paintings, or sell them unframed? There seems to be a school of thought on both sides of that one...

Janet - glad to hear you are getting some relief.

I usually sell my paintings unframed. This costs me less and some people are particular about their frames. But I do agree with those who say that it devalues a painting by not having it framed to show it off well.

Maybe when I get richer and more famous - I can afford to frame them

Janet - try to keep moving, stay flexible. Even with 3 herniated discs and arthritis, I'm better when I move more, sit less, and stretch a lot.
I've wanted to visit Quebec in the winter for a long time, maybe some day...
If I ever get that far I'll look you up!

Dale, I like to display my paintings in frames and list prices for with/without the frame - that way, it looks good, but if someone doesn't like or want my frame they don't have to buy it

That is great. I'm really happy for you.
Judy

Thanks everyone. Callie - that is a good idea.
My daughter showed my Dory's painting to a well -known artist in town today. He told her lots of things that I can work on and i am considering taking lessons from him. I haven't heard the details on the critique yet but once I do, I think I may post them on my Dory's topic so everyone can learn.

Dale, that would be great! Like you I find I learn so much from critique.

I would love to take lessons or attend workshops in Water Mixable Oils, but don't see much around for "us".

American Artist magazine, for example, features many ads for fascinating plein air workshops all over the States, but these seem to be for traditional oils. My wife is unable to work with turpentine, so we have nixed the idea of travelling to those workshops.

Has anyone here seen workshops for us "non-solvent" (insolvent?, ha ha) oil painters?

Mark Christopher Weber has classes for Water Soluble Oils. Here's the web page for his classes and workshops: http://www.markweberartist.com/LEVEL%201/CLASSES%20&%20WORKSHOPS.html

Jerry Yarnell works in Water Soluble Oils and has workshops. Here's a link to his site: http://www.yarnellart.com/cart2/Home.htm I didn't see a schedule but I'm sure if you contact him he'll be able to provide you with further information.

Off to the camp until Monday... have a great weekend everyone!

Around here all the schools have banned turps/solvents, so all oil painting classes are with ws oils. Do you have any sort of adult education classes near you? Here, they're offered through the community colleges, but I don't know about Canada.

For plein-air, I'd contact the instructor and ask if ws oils would be OK, mention health reasons - how can they say no then!

Hi Callie, and thanks for the links, Janet.

I looked into the Mark Weber courses, but those appear to be 6 weeks of once a week classes in Kansas City, which wouldn't work out for scheduling. (I live in Atlantic Canada). But his paintings are astonishingly good!! Darn.

There are community college level courses here where we live, but we're probably looking for intermediate level guidance. Some one-on-one with the right person (people) would really speed up our development. Especially valuable since we have never taken any painting courses, just watched YouTube artist demos. Pretty much self taught, along with my advertising experience in rendering layouts with Pantone markers. (yeehoo, talk about solvents!!)

We could opt for joining in on a traditional oils workshops, just that others could still be using terps and such, which would inevitably build up in the room during any studio sessions.

Very interesting to hear about the school bans of volatile solvents.. great stuff.

This leads me to my next question, why have you ( all) decided to go to WS paints? Health reasons?

No health problems here, and I love the smell of turpentine. Years ago the Artist's Magazine used to have all sorts of freebie offers - just pay a small postal charge and get all sorts of stuff. One offer was a set of 4 Russian sable brushes for $2. So when they had an offer for a trial set of Artisan ws oils for the cost of shipping, I ordered them. Tried them out, then ordered more of them, they were less than $2 per tube then, so I got lots of them!
I guess I got sucked in by the price (they weren't much different from the W&N oils I already had) and then the convenience really won me over. No more "decanting" jars of sludgy turps into old cans for later use, and I can paint in public places without worrying about the smell/fumes

I've been going to an advanced oils/acrylic workshop (for 10 yrs. now) at the comm. college here. No formal instruction, but the instructor keeps an eye on us to see who might need help/advice, and who can be left alone. The class is held in a public high school building that just went "green" last year, so no more solvents allowed. You might find that happening in your area, too.


Have you looked on Craig's list to see if anyone offers lessons or workshops in your area? Or you could advertise for what you're looking for. Also try local artist's websites. Some well established artists here only have workshop info on their sites, you'd never know they taught if you didn't look on their sites. Maybe a plein-air workshop would be OK, rather than painting indoors?

watermixableguy

Quote :

This leads me to my next question, why have you ( all) decided to go to
WS paints? Health reasons?

I started with WMO because of asthma. It's been great. The only problem I ran into was using walnut alkyd to hasten drying. I use regular walnut oil without a problem but not the alkyd. If I use it now, I try to work outside.

PS: I'm also all self-taught.
Judy

watermixableguy, one place that I found very helpful for finding out about local art classes is the nearest art store. They always seem to be aware of what is going on in the local art scene.

I chose WS oils because the turps give me migraines and I love the easy clean up.

It has been raining a lot here also. Although Seattle is known for rain, it feels like it will never stop…I do like the cooler weather though, but look forward to having more than one day of sun, maybe that’s why we’ve been sick around here, not much chance to get out and enjoy the outdoors. I also miss riding my bike to work, I always look forward to riding, Spring, Summer and part of the fall, I’ve been able to ride half of what I did last year.

Collie, I also like the fall and at times I like to say it’s one of my favorite time of year, although each season has a wonder and beauty.

Judy, Thank you for the challenge, not sure if I have looked at it yet, I believe I have, but not started and never have painted with a pallet knife. I did checkout some of the sites about painting with a knife and a little nervous to do it, but I do like challenges. Thank you for your time and energy.

Janett, I am glad to hear that your eye (Lasik) surgery went well, I have worked for eye doctors most of my life, except when I stayed home with the little ones. It is great that you no longer have to reach for your glasses to see, but they did tell you at some point you will have to get reading glasses…I hope your neck and back mends fully and glad to hear it is starting to get better. Fun to have campfires – I will have to checkout where you all live.

Have any of you heard of “Painting with the Masters”?
Dana

Watermixableguy: Originally my sister bought me some Artisans Oil for my first oil painting class about 9 or 10 years ago, but the teacher told me to buy some real oil paints--we wasn't teaching WMOs. I put them away and fell in love with Talens Rembrandt oil paint. I recently remarried and my husband has severe asthma and has been hospitalized with it before. So I found my old Artisans and ordered more colors and mediums and tried them out. I was having difficulty switching to Artisans so my husband told me that his asthma is only caused by physical exertion, not allergies. I was planning to go back to my Rembrandt oils when I caught a bad case of pneumonia a couple of months ago. The doctor said my past smoking (I've quit for quite a while) was part of the reason for catching pneumonia. Since then I've decided to stick with WMO's--why make my lungs worse than they already are if I don't have to. I still need to find the right medium or the right brand of WMOs, but I'm sure that patience will pay off.

BTW, the weather has been great here since June 1st anyway. It was a horribly long snowy winter though.

Dayle

Dale -- WONDERFUL, great encouragement, you are a great artist and love your work....I am so happy for you. Congratulations! And many more to paint and sale, as always thank you for sharing..... Dana

Judy, I've used the Artisan Quick Drying medium with success.

My wife and I had each done our very first painting: a small painting for charity. We underestimated the drying time of oils. After a couple of weeks, and the paintings still being wet/tacky, we still had time to do a second identical painting, this time mixing the oils with QDM.

The second paintings dried before the first, and we were able to meet the charitable event's submission deadline.

Crystal1, I have experimented with all of the Artisan mediums, and varnishes now. My wife and I have learned a lot by trial and error.

One of the "errors" and trials we went through was in learning about the very basic process of painting "fat over lean". We learned the hard way, by seeing some cracking in our paintings.
So, to keep the story brief, we did a lot of reading to learn what was causing it, and how to avoid it in the future.

We use Artisan thinner, and Artisan Medium. We buy them in the larger bottles, I think the size is 225 ml.

At times we employ Quick Drying medium too.

I have tried Artisan Stand Oil, but didn't find it produced any significant extension in drying time, so I tend not to use it now.