Tranquility

Oil on canvas, 5″ x 7″

Hidden Away

Oil on canvas, 10″ x 8″

Lately I’ve been making a lot of things in various media in which I try techniques, styles, materials, or subject matter that I normally don’t. This started as a watercolor sketch on a whim with no real plan except to test a different technique. While I worked on the brushstrokes I thought of adding a deer to it, since so many live around my house and are always looking at me like this from a distance. I liked how it turned out and made this oil painting based on that sketch.

The colors I used for the oil painting are-
• cobalt green deep (Blue Ridge)
• cobalt turquoise (Blue Ridge)
• cadmium green (a mix I made and tubed a few months ago of viridian and cadmium yellow from various brands)
• raw sienna red shade (Blue Ridge)
• titanium white (Williamsburg)

This is the original sketch, which in some ways I kind of like better. I might remake this again later as either a finished watercolor or a new oil painting.

Old Orchard

Oil on canvas, 10″ x 8″

A few days ago I had put a dab of each of my 8 different paints from Blockx onto my palette intending to do a mini review on their paint, but I’ve been busy so it ended up sitting around for a couple of days. Yesterday I decided to just try painting something with what was on my palette, but I didn’t really know what. After applying dabs of various colors to a canvas I saw that trees were starting to appear and it soon became an orchard. I’ve tried painting in an Impressionist style like this just once before, maybe 10 years ago, so this was a bit of an experiment for me.

The paints I used were-
French ultramarine blue deep, PB29
Turquoise green, PB36
Golden green, PY154+PG36
Titanium white, PW6
Crimson lake, PR264
Cadmium red orange, PO20
Mars yellow orange, PY42
Mars violet, PR101

The first four I used the most of and had to put more of the ultramarine, golden green, and white on my palette, but since I had some of all of them already there I used at least a little of everything.

The only brush I used was a Princeton synthetic round, 6300 series, size 2, and I didn’t clean it at any point while painting so it had all the different colors mixing together on it. I finished this entire painting in one painting session.

My opinion of the Blockx paint is that it’s some of the best, if not the best, that I’ve used. It tends to be a bit expensive though, but I got all of my tubes from various sales on specific colors with huge discounts. If I had to pay their normal prices then I’d be perfectly happy using less expensive brands instead, at least for cadmiums and cobalts. I think their titanium white is the best white that I have for its consistency.