Emoticons by Meg Lyman

4×4″ each, oil on canvas

SOLD

Continuing with the theme of “oils,” I present the Three Emoticons. I picked up these tiny 4×4″ gallery-wrapped canvases last time I was at my favorite art store:

I have a thing for the three primary colors together, so I did one of each, using several tube colors for each. I tried to make the brushstrokes fit the emotion associated with the color. Then I let them dry. For a month. It took forever. Then I went to Larry’s class and learned how to make the paint flow better and dry faster (with thinner, medium, and dryer). So I went back and painted the faces last week, and they dried in a day or two. Woo!

Larry’s Girl by Meg Lyman

16×20″ Oil on Masonite

Here she is… as finished as I can manage. Another nice thing about oils is that I can fix anything later on, so critiques are welcome! I think the contrast on her skin isn’t high enough, but I’m afraid I’ll ruin it if I do anything. I already tried darkening it and nearly botched the whole thing. Maybe I’ll go back after I’ve done a few weeks of nice, predictable pencil work.

It’s too big to fit on my scanner, so I photographed it with my snarky digital camera. The color’s pretty good but the contrast and detail aren’t quite right.

I’m not sure what to think of it, but I’m glad it’s finished. *whew*

I have just a few more steps to get that painting from class finished. I really hate how long oil paint takes to dry. It’s nice for fixing problems or taking a break to eat dinner, but it also means I have to wait 2 or 3 days for an area to dry before I can continue working.

In the meantime, I’ll share with you some random things I learned about oil painting. Feel free to add your own hints and tips.

• The more paint you squirt onto your palette (or mix up), the longer you can use it. It’ll usually form a skin overnight, but the paint underneath is still pretty good the next day.
• If your use of the palette knife is vigorous, keep a few backups on hand. They aren’t too sturdy.
• Master’s Brush Cleaner rocks. It works great for gouache, too… but make sure you have one for each.
• I had never used anything to thin oil paint except thinner (turpenoid). Adding an oil medium to the paint helps it flow a lot better, but also lengthens the drying time. In class I learned that 1/3 thinner, 2/3 oil, and a few drops of cobalt dryer work well – it makes the paint flow well and dry reasonably quickly. Just don’t lick your brushes, or use it around small children – cobalt dryer is poisonous.
• Masonite is easier to paint on than canvas, but you have to gesso it. Prepared Claybord is too smooth and Gessobord is pretty rough – although I have yet to try Gessobord with oils.
• The oil painting on Claybord in that post finally sold this week after hanging in the Marietta Pizza Company for six months!

I hope to have the workshop painting finished and blogged by mid-week.

The Kleptoctopus by Meg Lyman

6×6″ oil on canvas

SOLD

Thanks to The Sister for the title. Despite the fact that it took me a week of evenings to finish because of the slow-drying oil paint, I enjoyed working on this guy. But it brings up an interesting question: what to do about the staples?

Do you paint over them? Frame the piece? Or are you smart enough to buy only gallery-wrap canvas? All opinions requested. I have 7 more of these stapled 6×6″ canvases to paint.

A similar question: if you paint on cradled board, do you paint the sides, or leave the wood as-is?

Every medium I’ve tried has given me an accurate first impression. Sometimes my opinion evolves (see posts on my first and second attempt at pastels), but by the second try, I know how if I’ll like it. And, no matter the impression, I never abandon a medium, because I’m an optimist. Also, because I paid good money for the supplies, damnit.

My very first experience with oil paints was a class I took in some woman’s basement when I was ten. I have one oil painting from that class, and it’s pretty good. I don’t remember much, except the part when the teacher tried to help and ruined a cool textural effect I’d created. Also, there was a bully in the class. It was traumatic.

The oil painting:
My second experience with oil paints was 3 or 4 years ago. I signed up for a community oil class at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Their class selection is great, and I’ve taken several there. The oil class was just OK because the instructor wasn’t very good. He didn’t explain anything about the oil paints themselves, which made it hard for me to understand how to use them. He just said, “do what I do”… and we did, and my results were worse than the flowers I painted when I was ten:
That class left a bad taste in my mouth too. It was at least 3 years until I re-opened up those dusty tubes of oil paint. Last summer, I broke them out for the hell of it, and painted this. It was a blind three-color experiment (I picked three tubes with my eyes closed, plus limited amounts white, for my palette). It turned out just OK.

I broke them out again last week, because I had a bite on an oil commission. I needed to practice the blasted things. I decided on a self-portrait on canvas, and toned it a nice greenish blue. I had leftover blue, and being the stingy artmonger I am (see first paragraph), I decided to use it to tone something else. Wasn’t enough for a mid-sized canvas, but you can’t put oils on paper… hmm… ah, Claybord! I have lots of Claybord!

The only small pieces I had were Claybord smooth, which is so slick that you could slide across it in your socks if you were 2 inches tall. The Ampersand website suggests you prepare Claybord Smooth before using it with oil paint, since it has no tooth and dries so quickly. Well, I didn’t want to mess with the gesso, so I didn’t prepare it. And guess what… Ampersand was right.

The quick-drying part is great! Part of the reason I dislike oils is the ice-age duration you have to wait for them to dry. However, the slick part wasn’t so good. Putting it on thin or thick, the stuff streaked because of the lack of tooth.
Streeeeeeak, streeeeak, streeeeak.

So yeah, I’m still working on that self-portrait, but I really don’t like oils. With all respect to the wonderful Larry Elmore, who extolled their virtues, I don’t think their wonderful blending ability makes up for all the annoyances. They smell funny, they require messy mediums, they don’t clean with water, you can’t use them on regular ol’ paper, some of the accessories are toxic (dryers, turpentine), they take six months or more to dry (six months!!!), and they require varnishing. Give me good old water-based, quick-drying, non-blending gouache any day.

However, I will continue to work with them, because I paid good money for them, damnit.