I’m nearing the finish line on this 28×42″ oil painting of a Catskills vista from the top of Hunter Mountain. The colors are actually a bit warmer than they appear in the image above. When I finish the painting, I’ll get a more accurate image of it. You can see how much I’ve done on it by viewing this previously-posted version of the work in progress.
Love is a canvas, furnished by Nature, and embroidered by imagination — Voltaire
4×2″, Golden Acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, miniature easel included
The quote above is inscribed around the stretcher bars on the back of the canvas. Quarter is in the image for size reference only.
$100.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
I immediately thought of this quote when I set up to do this painting. The canvas is gallery wrapped, and the image is painted around the sides of the canvas, so that it can be viewed from all sides. The miniature easel will be shipped with the painting.
It is so difficult to get good photographs of miniatures. They always look much better in person. This one has a fairly dark background with some sheen, so it was impossible to get rid of all the glare from the lights when I took the photo. Here’s another image of it, with a Coke can for additional size reference:
For such a little painting, I used a tremendous palette! Colors:
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red Light
Pyrrole Red
Cadmium Red Medium
Alizarin Crimson hue
Cerulean Blue hue
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Oxide of Chromium
Jenkins Green
Titanium White
I had a few other colors out there as well, but the ones listed above were the ones I used.
I toned the mini canvas and the sides with a mix of Transparent Red Oxide and Ultramarine Blue Golden Fluid Acrylics. Those dry quickly, so with a little help from my hair dryer, I was then able to use Golden OPEN Acrylics to paint the rest over that toned canvas.
I started working on the basic placement of shapes, and then worked more and more toward contrasts and details. I use blu-tack to adhere the mini canvas to a larger piece of foam board. That way I can hold it securely in one hand when necessary, while painting with the other.
This is a progress image of the 28×42″ commission I’m working on. It all started when my client and her dear hubby met at Hunter Mountain in New York State! She saw this painting on my website, which I did from the top of Hunter Mountain, and purchased it through RiverWinds Gallery, where I had it displayed.
She decided that she wanted a large version to take up a wall of her dining room, and wondered if I’d be willing to incorporate some of her room colors in the painting, and omit some of the colors of that smaller version that didn’t go with her decor. She sent me these color photos of her carpets which displayed rich earth tones perfectly suited to landscape work, but far different from my usual palette.
Because both the color palette and proportional ratio of the painting were to change for the commission, I decided to do this third painting using the same ratio and colors as the commisioned work, which I posted the other day. (See below the previous post below or click the link.)
From there, I moved onto the full size version of the painting. Here’s the large, white canvas looming before me in the studio:
The first steps were to tone it, place the compositional elements, add the dark areas and pull out the lights.
Then I started going in with color. The first photo in this post shows the current state of the painting. From here I’ll be pushing the lights and darks, adding in more of the colors from my client’s samples, and making adjustments as I go. I’d like to drop that foreground horizon line a touch too….It keeps on creeping up all by itself when I’m not looking!
Some of you may recall my recent painting, The Road Home in Fall. I liked that painting and the location so much that I’ve decided to make a series out of it. My plan is to do a 12×9″ painting in each season, possibly selecting one or two of those to do larger paintings as well. I am calling this “Early Winter” because I hope to do a late winter version too. I just can’t seem to get enough of this magical location! The winding, uphill path, evergreens on the right, and steep hill on the left offer a good composition with lots of variety.
This one is not yet completed, but shouldn’t take too much longer. I think I’ll have a finished version up this week.
12×9″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
I set out on a beautiful sunny day with my easel. When I came to this gorgeous spot, I set up in the middle of the road to paint.
As soon as I had my easel out and started to lay in color, the clouds thickened, shadows vanished, and colors changed!
I decided to stay with the moody, atmospheric day it had become. Most of this painting was done on location. I had plans to paint with a friend at Olana that afternoon, so I had to pack up before I was quite finished, and added the finishing touches in the studio today.
Bench with a Hudson View
7×5″, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140lb hot press
$115.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
This is a scene from a little park near the train station in Cold Spring, New York. I used a photo reference and a 5×7″ Fabriano watercolor block of their delicious hot press, rag paper. I began with a modified contour drawing alla Charles Reid:
9×12″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
$350.00 via PayPal, $15 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
This painting was started on location and finished up in the studio. It was one of those cold, overcast, pre-winter days that generally lack excitement, but the falls were spectacular and made all the drama.
Below is a photo of the painting showing what was completed on location. I tried my best to capture all the information I’d need to finish it in the studio. There wasn’t really much left to do—mostly filling in some background color and tweaking a bit here and there.
My palette for this painting:
Red Oxide Transparent (RGH)
Yellow Oxide Transparent (RGH)
Cadmium Scarlet (Winsor Newton)
Permanent Carmine (RGH)
Prussion Blue (RGH)
Ultramarine Blue (RGH)
Cadmium Yellow Primrose (RGH)
Titanium White (RGH & WN Griffin mixed half and half)
Since my post about tubing my own paint, I’ve received many requests for instructions from viewers. Hopefully this demo will answer most of your questions. Many thanks to Marc Hanson for his paint-tubing advice as I got started with doing my own.
There are many reasons for tubing your own paint:
Mix leftover paints when a session is done and save it as a neutral “mud mix” for future paintings;
Make your own paints out of binders and pigments;
Mix various values of grays and tube them;
Premix favorite color mixes;
Purchase quality paints that come in jars, like RGH brand, then tube them yourself;
Buy your favorite paints in very large tubes, and transfer to smaller tubes for travel/plein air work.
I made up a dozen tubes yesterday of various reds, taking photos along the way to show you how to do it. Most artists will find that they already have most of what they need, except perhaps the tubes themselves! Those can be ordered from online sources such as Dick Blick, Jerrys Artarama, and ASW.
Supplies I use are:
Paint tubes (of course!)
Long, straight palette knife. (Width depends on your tube size.)
Pre-cut strips of paper towel
Rubber gloves
Wooden craft sticks
Tube wringer
Canvas pliers
Sharpie marker/marking pen
Packing tape
Little colored dots (optional, but really handy)
Put on your disposable gloves. Holding the open end of the tube upright, transfer paint into the tube with the palette knife. Place it as far down into the tube as you can. Tap several times as you transfer, so that the paint settles down in the tube and you don’t get air down there. Try to keep the sides of the tube free of paint. When you get 1.5-2″ from the top, scrape out around the side of the tube above the paint level to remove as much paint as possible.
Squeeze the end flat with your fingers, making sure you get out all the air. Use a wooden craft stick on a small piece of paper towel to press out as much paint as you can that remains in the flattened section of the tube.
Next you’ll use the tube wringer to crimp that end and prevent paint from escaping. I find that by folding a few thicknesses of paper towel over the tube end first, I can avoid a lot of mess on my tube wringer! That saves me a lot of cleaning time too. If you do happen to get a lot of paint on it, just fold a piece of paper towel and wring it through a few times to remove the paint.
Fold the tube end tightly with your fingers, crimping it with the canvas pliers as you go.
I like to use these little labels on the tubes that I can prepare in advance, but if you prefer, you can just write the color directly on the tube with a sharpie. The little colored dots make it easy for me to recognize color family when sorting quickly through a bunch of tubes in my box. I put a small dot on the back side of the tube as well.
Surround the label and dots with clear packing tape. That will prevent the name from coming off. If you’ve written the names directly on the tubes with a Sharpie, it will protect it from rubbing off.
All done. It’s a cinch!
Every so often it’s good for viewers to see into our studios at what goes on behind the scenes in addition to painting. For the past few days, I’ve been spending some time getting oil paints from jars into these tubes. Many thanks to my friend Mary and daughter Sarah, who lent a helping hand (or two!) while my right hand recovers from surgery.
Most of these tubes are small to fit easily into my pochade boxes and not add much weight. Usually I carry two tubes of white with me and mix my titanium white oil paint half and half with Griffin alkyd white to speed drying time. So, for the white tubes here, I mixed the two whites before tubing them. Now I’ll only have to carry one tube of white with me. (Actually, my “Studio Assistant” daughter measured, mixed and tubed most of the white.)
Nine jars of various colors down, three to go! That translates to about another 12-14 tubes of paint.
36×24″, Oils on stretched canvas, unframed
$1725 $1,725.00 via PayPal, $50 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
This large oil painting is a scene painted from a photo I took on Indian Hill Road in Garrison, New York. It is a mostly-unpaved road that leads down to Constitution Marsh. The fall foliage there is always the best anywhere!
For those who like to see things in progress, below is an image of how things began. I worked off both a computer monitor and printed photo, and used them more or less as a springboard to create the painting. I washed the background with yellows to start. This would give the feeling of the light filtering through the fall leaves as I added more layers. Once that yellow wash was on the canvas, I went right to the darkest darks and mapped out the painting in light and shadow.
The image below gives you an idea of how I go about laying in the leaves and colors.
18×24″, Oils on stretched canvas
This is a work in progress that was started on location today. I’d like to get in at least one more plein air day with it, and a third day in the studio should finish it up.
You can see how much the light and colors changed once that thick cloud layer rolled in!
12×15″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
Today I brought my new Beauport easel down to the beaver pond. I tried to send progress images to my Facebook page from the painting location, but it doesn’t look like they arrived there. I’ll have to get help from my daughter the expert! I don’t have my imaging software here, so the photo above is shown without any adjusting of the image.
Below are images I took with my camera phone and attempted to email to Facebook. It’s not the greatest camera, but at least I remembered to take progress images this time! My viewers are always asking for them, and I never remember to take them.
Just as I got this easel set up, it started to sprinkle. The Beauport sets up easier than you’d think. It can hold a really BIG canvas! Look at how small this 12×16 looks on this big easel! LOL
Fortunately, the sprinkles were short-lived. The sky was looking better and better, though it doesn’t show up in the photo. That’s one of the wonderful things about painting plein air. We see so much better than a camera lens. I started blocking in my darks and then local color.
I waited to put in the sky because it kept on improving. I was glad I waited, because by the time I decided to put it in, it was much better than it was when I started the painting. I was surprised by how much fall color there was out by the pond. The rest of the property is barely showing hints of fall. Here is the painting nearly finished.
I am really loving this easel. I used a covered Masterson palette with a pad of 12×16″ palette paper in it. That and a 12×16″ panel carrier fit into a Creativo backpack, along with my paints, brushes, camera, paper towels, and brush washer. I was surprised by how quickly and easily the easel set up and broke down. The lid of the Masterson palette worked out well to hold my turp container and some paper towels. I found the holes in the easel legs to be handy brush holders!
This is my first-ever video slide show! I hope you enjoy this display of some of my paintings that have been done with the slow-drying Golden OPEN Acrylics.
16×20″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Below is the painting in its initial form, as it came home from my plein air expedition. I was always bothered by that large piling so close to the center of the painting. Adjusting the composition, in this case, was very simple. By enlarging the piling to the right, I was able to remove that focal point in the center, rebalancing the painting. I think it works very well now! Below is the original, so that you can compare. Color and value differences that you see are due to the paintings being adjusted on different computers. (That gives you an indication of how different paintings can look from one computer to another, depending on our monitors and settings.)
This was painted on location in Cold Spring, New York, facing Storm King Mountain. I paint all over the Hudson River Valley, and the Hudson Highlands region certainly rates as one of the most dramatic along the river. I had to wait a long time for the clouds to break before they struck the mountain, but once the sun broke through it was quite spectacular.
For those who like to see some of the process, here is a photo of the Quinacridone Gold underpainting that I did for this one:
$115.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
8 x 12″, Pastels on Wallis professional sanded paper, unframed
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
Below is a picture of my setup, with the painting in progress.
12×16″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
$440.00 via PayPal, $20 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
Kaaterskill Clove was one of the favorite painting locations for many of the Hudson River School artists. Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Jasper Cropsey and many others painted these mountains in centuries past. It’s easy to see why they were drawn to this dramatic location. The Hudson River provided easy access upstate from New York City and the Lower Hudson Valley. The mountains are only 10 miles inland from the river.
Here is an image of the work in progress, after the underpainting and initial color layer:
Here’s how I set up to paint from the computer for works larger than 8×10″. I prefer this to using printed photos.
The colors I used are:
Titanium White
Cadmium Yellow Lemon
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Raw Sienna
Cadmium Red
Cerulean Blue
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Viridian
Ivory Black
These are the mediums I planned to use for the painting. It’s the first time I tried the Weber Res-n-gel, but it didn’t tack up as quickly as I’d hoped. I think I prefer just turp, or turp and a tiny bit of Liquin for the underlayers.
I use a glass palette in the studio with a sheet of brown kraft paper below it. It is so easy to clean. I had a glass store cut this 16×24 piece of 1/4″ glass for me and grind the edges.
I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the steps and materials used along the way.
$115.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
5 x 7″ beautifully double matted to 8×10″, Gouache on Fabriano Artistico 100% rag paper. Painting with mat will fit into a standard 8×10″ frame, or without the mat in a 5×7″ frame. Price includes double mat.
Many thanks to Connie van Winssen for use of a photo reference for this painting from her villiage of Westbroek in The Netherlands. I don’t generally paint from photos other than my own, but I was so captivated by the colors and mood of this scene that I just had to paint it!
I selected a warm, limited palette of colors: Yellow deep, Venetian red, Ultramarine blue, and white to bring out the rich warmth and glow of the scene.
Below, you can see what my palette ended up looking like when I was finished! I did wipe it off once during the painting process, after laying in the initial colors. When a palette gets too muddy, that mud starts making its way into the painting.
Here’s how it looks with the mat, ready for a standard 8×10″ frame:
Sometimes I just can’t seem to get ready to paint. I use so many different mediums, and paint such diverse subjects, that my studio is forever littered with acrylics, gouache, watercolor palettes, sketchbooks lying around, canvases stacked up against the walls, still life objects lining the window ledges, and dirty water containers, not to mention all the things that end up in my studio that don’t even belong here!
I woke up this morning thinking about starting a large painting. When I got to my studio, I took out a 24×36″ canvas and put it on the easel. All the furniture is on wheels, so I started thinking about doing some “easy” rearranging. Hahaha! It never works out that way. I was putting things away and moving things around, and by the time that was done, it was way too late to start something big.
Here are my studio mascots, collectively known as Double Trouble!
Even Lulu and Lucy thought I was crazed. They were very curious about the changes in their surroundings, and wondered what Mom was up to.
I figured I’d set up a still life and paint in watercolors instead, since I’d lost the morning already. Even that process seemed to go on forever today. Blue cloth or striped? Two clementines or a little blue and gold box? Brass bird or horse sculpture?
I finally made my decision on the still life setup, but now we were already into the afternoon. The phone started ringing. My daughter came home from school. I have a meeting this evening and had to get dinner underway. The day was slipping away. It seemed the best choice was to take some more photos to share with my viewers.
The image above shows the area where I have my computer and do many of my small paintings. If I’m not working from life, I look at the images on the computer monitor instead of printing out photos. The color is so much better, and I can zoom in as needed and make color/value adjustments. Plus, it saves all that ink and paper!
My sister gave me this hanging storage device. I think it was designed to hang in a closet and store jewelry, but it’s perfect for paint tubes. My most-used colors are in a box near the easel, so this holds mostly tubes of less-used oil paint colors that I need only on occasion, and keeps them easy to locate, yet out of the way.
My brother-in-law built this beautiful spice cabinet. It has a glass door with a key lock. When he moved to California, he didn’t know what to do with it, so I promised to put it to good use. It serves as a display/storage cabinet for my small still life objects and some smaller jars of mediums and pigments.
Some time ago, I made and installed these drying rails in my studio for my small paintings. They can hold paintings up to 16×20″ in size. I bought the molding at Home Depot, painted it, and secured it into the wall. If I were to do it again, I’d add a 1×1″ strip behind it to make the shelves a little deeper, and the paintings more secure. I use a dab of blu-tack on the backs of the paintings near the top to be sure they won’t topple over, since my rails are so narrow.
Tomorrow morning I will have that nice still life setup and my watercolors all set to go, plus a large canvas ready and waiting. At least I won’t have to clean again!
Edit:
Some viewers have emailed comments and questions.
Hi, Jamie,
Thank you for these wonderful pictures of your painting room. There
are wonderful ideas in them, and hopefully one day I can implement
one or two of them. Right now my studio is too crowded to even work!
It’s an extreme project.
You are inspiring and refreshing to see!
Regards,
Marilyn
PS I love your two birdies. It must be nice to have them and their
chatter in the creative process.
Marilyn, thank you for your comment. Have you ever heard that annoying sound that a crow makes? Well, imagine that fifty times louder. And imagine two of them. Then imagine it in an enclosed room with little sound absorption. That’s what Lulu and Lucy sound like when they get on a rant! They do make cute sounds too, like a gurgling sound when I give them peanuts, and a purring sound when they sit on my shoulder sometimes. They make kissing noises and say “Kiss?” when they want me to come over. So, for anybody who’s thinking they are so cute and they should run out and get some Jenday Conures, be sure your neighbors live far away, and that you have earplugs within reach!
Jamie
Thanks for sharing your studio.
I have a couple of otherwise decent universities that say I am a sculptor. Lately I have been working on my studio. Sculpture studios never look as nice as yours, ever.
Thanks again
dave
Dave, I knew there was a reason why I decided to be a painter! 
I have to say though, mine rarely looks this neat. That’s why I had to take the pictures—so that I can remember it was once this way!
Jamie
Jamie – Your studio looks great. I feel inspired. Right now I can’t walk in the room.
How long did it take you? Do you keep all the mediums in separate places?
Kay
Kay, it took a whole day. Yes, I do keep my mediums separate, and I keep my main colors separate from my extra colors, for the most part. I generally keep my main colors in a zip-lock bag, one for each medium. The bags are great because they take up the least amount of space, and I can just grab the bag labeled “main colors” when I’m on the run to go out painting. Extra oil paint tubes are stored on shelves in the garage, since they can endure cold temperatures easily.
Jamie
5×7″, Oils on Ampersand Gessoboard
These three, small vases were made by my favorite potter, Marilyn Price. Her work is at the RiverWinds Gallery in Beacon, NY, along with many of my own paintings. Very often when I go to the gallery, I see something Marilyn made that I just can’t resist. My latest acquisition was made last Saturday, when I purchased the blue vase in the back of this painting. I set it up with two of her other pieces and played with using a lot of strong, pure color.
Palette:
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Raw Sienna
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red
Permanent Alizarin Crimson
Cerulean Blue
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue Deep
Viridian
Ivory Black
Titanium White
I started making some of my own oil paint a few years ago when I was in search of a higher quality Ultramarine Blue. In using a limited palette at that time, I was dependent on the ultramarine for providing the basis for the dark side of my palette. I needed the deepest, darkest, most heavily-pigmented ultramarine I could find. The best solution to my problem was to make my own. I stay away from cadmiums and toxic pigments, and just buy those in the store. Some pigments mix up easier than others. Ultramarine is a cinch!
The photo above shows the materials I use for paintmaking. I made this batch of Ultramarine Deep today and took these photos as I went to show my process. Making paint is my version of playing in the sandbox.
I begin with a nice big pile of pigment (above) on a 1/4″ glass slab, and make a crater in the center. I fill the crater with alkalai-refined linseed oil.
I work the oil into the dry pigment particles. I add more oil a little at a time as needed. I suppose I could do this more scientifically by taking careful measurements, but as in cooking, I prefer to adjust as needed rather than following a recipe. Now it’s time to take out the glass muller.
Contrary to what you might think, the paint becomes runnier as it is mulled. The glass muller crushes the clumps of pigment particles apart, so that the individual particles will be surrounded by the oil binder.
Since the paint tends to liquify as the oil surrounds the individual pigment particles, you may find it gets too runny and you need to add more pigment. There is actually quite a fine line between too much and not enough.
You may think you need quite a bit more pigment to increase the body of the paint, and then in a flash the entire mass becomes dry and unworkable. (above) A little more oil does the trick.
This is what I consider mulled to perfection. The pigment is well mulled into the oil. You can tell from the sheen that there is enough oil so that the paint won’t be underbound. If I add more pigment at this point, it will likely clump together again.
I’m done! I store these small containers of homemade paint in the freezer, and clean up the implements with mineral spirits or Windex. The paint containers will keep in the freezer indefinitely, as the cold slows the oxidation of the paint and the containers are airtight. I could put it into tubes if I preferred. Ultramarine pigment can get stringy when left sitting in oil, and since I don’t use wax or other additives in my paint to counteract that tendency, I find it keeps a better working consistency in the freezer.
Now it’s time to go paint!
Edit: I have removed the step of adding any mineral spirits at all, even in small amounts. I have done it both ways, and I think it is easier to gauge the proportions of oil and pigment without additional ingredients. Mineral spirits can result in underbinding of the paint, and it’s better not to take that risk.
I know this looks like some kind of strange abstract in its infant stages, but stay tuned! Watercolor Wednesday will continue on Thursday this week, and I’ll post the finished painting tomorrow.
Finished painting can be seen by clicking here.
6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
$150.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
This is my favorite tree along the lakeshore here. It turns this bright crimson color in fall, and I love the twists and turns of the trunk.
I painted this with my new little pochade box! It is the Guerrilla Painter Thumbox with the palette extension and watercolor palette. I filled the watercolor palette up with oil paints. That palette gets covered with the mixing palette, so the paints stay wet and it’s really fast to set up. Here’s a picture of the new box with a progress image of the painting:
6×6″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on Ampersand Gessoboard
Above is the completed painting, and below is an image of the work in progress. I’d initially planned to put in foreground grasses, but after doing that, I felt the painting was more effective without them. So, I worked on it yet a third time, and took the foreground grasses out!
It’s interesting how much the color of light affects what we see. The image of the finished painting was taken with the corrected light of my photo box, but the progress image was taken in cool daylight. The actual colors in paintings vary according to the lighting conditions where we view them.
I did the underpainting for this work with a color I’d not tried before from the Golden OPEN line—Quinacridone Gold. I love the warm glow that it brings to the work. I could get hooked on this color!
This is painted from a photo I took down in Constitution Marsh on the Hudson River. It’s been in my file of things I want to paint for a long time! With fall on the way, it seemed the right moment to pull out this lively autumn scene.
I’m still using an expanded palette because the paint is still wet from yesterday, and I’ve even added a few colors to the large assortment I was working with. So far for this painting I’ve used:
Titanium White
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Naples Yellow
Cadmium Red Light
Pyrrole Red
Ultramarine Blue
Transparent Red Oxide
Quinacridone Gold
Carbon Black
Jenkins Green
5×7″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on Ampersand Gessoboard
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I drove to the other end of the lake to get western views of the sunset. We took loads of photos. This is my first painting from that series of images. I managed to stop myself a few times along the way to take some photos and post a demo.
I set up to paint with more colors on my palette than usual in order to get the more highly saturated sunset colors.
As you can see above, I used a more expanded palette for this painting than usual. My color choices were:
Titanium White
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red Light
Pyrrole Red
Quinacridone Magenta
Ultramarine Blue
Jenkins Green
Phthalo Blue
Carbon Black
When I paint on a small board like this 5×7″ Gessoboard above, it’s hard to hold it and paint edge to edge. I use “blu tack” and affix it to an 8×10″ board. Then I can hold the larger board and be able to paint all the way to the edges without getting paint on my fingers, or I can set it down on a little tabletop easel.
My computer monitor yields stronger, more accurate color and chroma than a printed out photo, so I like to set up like this for small works and paint right off the computer screen. I use the old telephone book on the right to wipe my brushes before rinsing. It’s a great way to conserve paper towels and simultaneously recycle and old phone book. When the page gets filled with paint, I just tear it off, toss it, and go to the next page.
When a painting has areas of light, highly saturated color, I always put that down first. That holds the chroma, and then I can paint into it. It’s a lot easier to dull down strong color than it is to get this kind of brilliance on top of a grey or dark color. You can see how I reserved all the areas of strong color here:
Once the base colors and values have been laid down, I can start painting into them, creating variation, adding details, and adjusting edges. From the step above, it isn’t a long way to the finish line:
I have 22 freshly varnished oil and acrylic paintings in these drying racks. Over the past several days they’ve been getting isolation coats and varnish coats. Many artists who paint in both mediums have asked me for information on my varnishing process, so I thought I’d take some time today to describe my process.
There are several different products that can be used to obtain a variety of finishes depending on personal artistic preferences. I love gloss varnish. It pops the colors and values and gives a shiny, professional appearance. I have chosen products to yield that result. There are many other good products on the marketplace too.
I start with Golden Soft Gel (Gloss) and relatively soft, synthetic brushes to do an isolation coat on the acrylic paintings. Oil paintings do not require this step. I use the small container shown above to measure. The Gel gets diluted two parts Gel to one of water. I mix it up thoroughly in a styrofoam bowl.
I clean off the painting surface with a lint free rag to be sure there are no dust particles on the surface. Then each dry acrylic painting gets a thin coating, following the direction of the brushstrokes. One coat is generally enough to seal a relatively non-porous surface, such as my sealed, primed hardboards. Rag paper and matboard, even if sized before painting, generally requires 2-3 thin coats. You can tell when you’ve put on enough coats because the surface develops a soft sheen.
Many acrylic painters make the mistake of eliminating the isolation coat. That results in too much varnish penetrating through the surface of the support, and can cloud your painting. Also, it will leave an uneven finish. Putting on enough isolation coats to prevent penetration of the varnish yields a beautifully even gloss. It is well worth the additional steps! The second isolation coat can be applied several hours after the first if necessary. Be sure the first coat is dry, and not tacky.
I like the Soluvar Gloss Varnish a lot for both oil and acrylic paintings. Be sure your oil paintings are completely dry before varnishing. That will generally take 6-12 months. Acrylic paintings can be varnished as soon as the isolation coat has cured. In dry, room temperature conditions, that should only take a few days.
Soluvar varnish is removable for cleaning, non-yellowing, and gives a great sheen. I used to use Gamvar, but found I had some adhesion problems on sections of some of my oil paintings, and the varnish would bead up as it was applied. I have not had that problem with Soluvar. I use the large, natural hair brush above for paintings 12×16 and larger, and the smaller natural/synthetic blend brush for smaller works. You need to work quickly with varnish before it dries.
I pour a small amount into a ceramic pot that I reserve for varnishing. I dip the bottom section of the brush in and wipe some off on the side of the pot. Varnish your painting section by section, overlapping sections as you go. I lie them face up once done until they are tacky. Although varnish should be applied too thin to drip, I always take that precaution. It’s better to be safe than sorry!
I got inexpensive, small letter holders (above) at Staples, and each can hold five paintings upright. They are only a couple of dollars each, and about 4″ tall. I bought them a couple at a time as I needed more and more of them. Once the paintings have tacked up, I set them in the letter holders. The first photo in this post shows what the paintings look like when they are set into a series of these letter holders.
You can also see on that first image, that a fan above the paintings draws the solvent fumes out of the room while I work. I have another fan on the other side of the room, by an open door to the garage, that helps push air across the room and out. That way, my paintings will dry faster and I can simultaneously vent the fumes out of my work space.
Once the paintings are varnished, I give them a couple of days to dry fully (in dry weather) before framing them. I hope this little demo helps some of you who have been struggling with varnishing. If you’ve been avoiding it, you’ll find it’s a lot easier than you thought, and the result is well worth the little bit of time and effort. Your paintings will glow with a new life!
You can read more about varnish application techniques in this article on the Golden website.
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
I was able to get permission to paint at the old Garrison Castle today. I stood out on an upper floor balcony, with a straight shot above West Point, upriver, through the Hudson Highlands and beyond. You can even see Bannerman Island next to Breakneck Ridge from here. The river does a complete, tight “S” curve at this point between West Point and Constitution Island. It must be quite the navigational nightmare for a large ship. It is a staggeringly beautiful view.
It started out as a sunny day, but quickly changed over to cloudy, and then the rain showers moved in. (The photo above, painted toward the end of my session, was clearly after the light had changed!) This is a very complex scene, with layers of hills and mountains extending all the way through the Highlands, to the cliffs of the Shawangunks, and even to the Catskill Mountains beyond the Gunks. Plus, all those buildings at West Point! The shifting weather made a tough scene even harder. I had to pack it in before I could finish. There’s not too much left to do on this; I’ll either finish it from a photo I took, or else try to get permission to return.
Here it is in its current unfinished state. It’s 12×16″, oils on canvas covered hardboard. I’ll post it again when it’s finished.
7×5″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard, custom framed to 11×9″
$125.00 via PayPal, $10 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
Although this scene was an enormous challenge to paint, I think I had an even more difficult time trying to get the photo right! I can’t seem to get the dark trees in the background light enough without bleaching out the foreground flowers. This painting will be available here on my website for only a couple of weeks.
Since this scene presented so many interesting challenges, I decided to take a few extra pictures to share.
Here is a photo of the scene:
I was immediately drawn to the strong contrasts, and the L-shaped composition created by the flowers, fountain and figure. I also love painting stone walls, so it was a plus to have that in the composition as well. Fitting all this onto a 5×7 panel didn’t prove to be easy.
Here’s my pack stool and lightweight painting box. The umbrella clamp is affixed to my stool. I was using a Pittman bag, which can hold my box flat so the paint won’t shift as I change locations. My panel carrier and extra paints fit in there too, and even the umbrella.
Here’s a closeup of the box, ready for paint. The panel is affixed to the box lid with blu-tac. It works great. The panels and paper stay put, and there are no clips or clamps obscuring parts of the painting surface. My paper towel is clipped onto the box lid to allow more room alongside the palette for paints and my sprayer.
The plastic paint storage containers were purchased in the camping section of Sports Authority. They have a rubber seal around the outside so the paint stays fresh. I find it much easier to set out paint this way, rather than having to search for a tube and open caps.
The box further to the back contains my standard plein air palette:
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Pyrrole Red
Transparent Red Oxide
Phthalo Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Titanium White
The box in the front contains add-ons that I use in the figure studio. I bring it along for plein air too, just in case….It has
Naples Yellow
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Red Light
Oxide of Chromium
Cerulean Blue Chromium hue
Permanent Alizarin
I also carry quinacridone magenta with me for these garden scenes.
Whoever said that every painting has to have an ugly stage sure knew what they were talking about. There’s mine! I toned the upper part of the painting with transparent red oxide, and painted the figures a dark, greyed blue. That way, even in the underpainting, I could judge the figures more carefully. Then I worked in the green background. I blocked in the area of strong yellow below to reserve it—-a useful tip given to me by wonderful plein air artist, Lee Haber.
From there, it was lots of fun getting the painting to emerge. I feel like my painting process doesn’t really get underway until after this block-in step is done and I have a layer of paint down. Getting this much done didn’t take all that long, but I forgot to stop and get more pictures once I got past this beginning stage. It did eventually get done.
I started another painting later in the afternoon, but it started to rain and I had to pack up. I’ll finish it from a photo on a rainy day later in the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed these extra photos!
12×9″, soft pastels on Art Spectrum sanded pastel paper
$325.00 via PayPal, $15 shipping within the US. Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com for international rates.
Everybody loves visiting an artist’s studio and seeing paintings come together, so I thought I’d share part of the process of this painting.
Here’s a photo of my setup in my studio, along with the pastel in progress. The pastels on the paper towel are the ones I selected from my huge box of colors. Setting them aside like this makes them easier to find, and helps maintain a unified palette with good color harmony.
Above is a photo of the full area of my studio where I was working on this piece, so you can see the whole pastel box. I think now you can see why I find it necessary to separate the colors I’m using in a particular work; otherwise I’d be forever looking to find them again!
This is an image of the painting about 1/3 of the way through the process. The basic color plan has been made and the objects blocked in. Following this stage, it’s time for refinement. Most of my time on a painting is spent in the refining stages.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip to my studio!
Here’s my setup while test driving the new box!
Click on any images below for a larger view. The post below this one gives instructions for making the box shown in these images.
I’ve had this idea brewing in my head for almost a year, and finally made my car/laptop painting box this weekend! I wanted something extremely lightweight. This is made out of a single sheet of black foamcore! I used foamcore to make my pastel boxes, and was amazed by how sturdy it turned out to be when constructed properly. I used the same techniques to create this painting box. Best of all is that it weighs only one pound!
The white palette is a foam meat tray. I found them in an 11.25 x 9.25″ size and thought that would be ideal for palette inserts for my box, and also to use as palettes for oils and acrylics in open studio. They are perfect for gouache and casein too! I found a place online that had them and ordered a case of 250. A stack of four can fit in this lap box.
Here’s what the case looks like when it’s closed up for traveling. It measures 17×10x2″. The front closures are velcro strips.
The box is sealed with a couple of coats of Golden GAC100, so it can be wiped clean and should be fairly water resistant in case of water and paint spills.
Inside the box, there’s ample room for brushes, paints, several foam palettes, paper towels, a small solvent container like the mini one made by Guerrilla Painter, or a collapsible water container like this Aqua Tote for acrylics.
I found the little containers (above) in the camping department at a sporting goods store. They have an air-tight seal, so I think they should work out great for holding and storing all types of paints. With these two, I can hold more than enough colors for an outing plus a way to store leftovers when I’m done. However, the box is deep enough to hold tubes of paint if I prefer to bring the tubes.
I decided to make the back hinges out of heavy duty velcro. Because this box is for multi-media use, and I also plan to use it for painting in my car, I wanted it to be as versatile as possible. Velcro hinges make the lid completely removable if the car is tight for space and I want to separate my drawing/painting support from the box itself, or if I need to lie it flat for watercolor work.
This side arm prevents the box lid/painting support from opening too far. I decided to use velcro for this feature as well, in order to have greater adjustment potential. The velcro “hook” strips along the side (above) and the back (below) secure the arm made of the “loop” velcro.
The Aqua Tote water holder, below, is one of my favoite items of painting gear for water media. Not only does it pack up into a small space in the box, but it also serves as my brush holder, and is very lightweight.
These are available online from Dick Blick, Jerrys Artarama, and ASWexpress.com.
Another helpful item I found recently was a package of small misters. These are helpful for keeping acrylic paints wet on the palette, as well as for moistening paper for watercolor and acrylic wet techniques. They are only four inches long and 1/2″ wide. I found them at my local Michael’s Arts and Crafts shop.
Now that I’ve finished taking photos and typing all this out, I’m going to find something to paint and give my new box a test drive!
Update after field testing:
I’d suggest using duct tape for the back hinge instead of the velcro strips. I’ve found that I have yet to make use of the capability to remove the box lid, and the velcro strips keep pulling up.
Instead of office clips to affix my painting support, I am finding blu-tac much more convenient. It enables me to paint right up to the edges of my work.
The office clips can be used on the left side of the lid (if right handed) to clip some paper towels or a rag to the lid. That way, the left side of the lower tray can be reserved for paint tubes/containers, mediums, and water/turp.
