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Still learning
Jul. 9th, 2007 10:33 amOil painting is a constant lesson in things I should already know. This weekend, I re-learned:
1) Poking a painting does not make it dry faster.
2) Listen to the Muse, no matter how cracked you think she is. If she says "today we're painting with toilet paper" then just give up and paint with the damn toilet paper. Otherwise, you'll spend forever with a brush trying to get that certain texture and then, screaming, you'll take turpentine to it and wipe the last two hours out of existence and be back to square one with less paint and still no texture. Then, only then, will you grab the roll of toilet paper and have the required look in 10 minutes of smooshing paint around. Just start with the toilet paper, already. The Muse has excellent instincts about stuff like this and its easier on the cats if you aren't screaming and throwing brushes around the room.
3) Just because the tutorial you have shows Step B as a natural progression from Step A, that doesn't mean you're going go to get to Step B anytime soon.
4) The tools listed as being used to reach Step B are probably not the tools you're going to use. See #2.
5) Different colors of oil paint dry at different rates. Just because the blues are dry doesn't mean that the browns are. Titanium white seems to dry the slowest, so use that as the litmus test.
6) Dry your painting upright with the wet side towards the wall. Otherwise, it will be more textured than you want and "cat hair" is not a really useful texture to paint over.
1) Poking a painting does not make it dry faster.
2) Listen to the Muse, no matter how cracked you think she is. If she says "today we're painting with toilet paper" then just give up and paint with the damn toilet paper. Otherwise, you'll spend forever with a brush trying to get that certain texture and then, screaming, you'll take turpentine to it and wipe the last two hours out of existence and be back to square one with less paint and still no texture. Then, only then, will you grab the roll of toilet paper and have the required look in 10 minutes of smooshing paint around. Just start with the toilet paper, already. The Muse has excellent instincts about stuff like this and its easier on the cats if you aren't screaming and throwing brushes around the room.
3) Just because the tutorial you have shows Step B as a natural progression from Step A, that doesn't mean you're going go to get to Step B anytime soon.
4) The tools listed as being used to reach Step B are probably not the tools you're going to use. See #2.
5) Different colors of oil paint dry at different rates. Just because the blues are dry doesn't mean that the browns are. Titanium white seems to dry the slowest, so use that as the litmus test.
6) Dry your painting upright with the wet side towards the wall. Otherwise, it will be more textured than you want and "cat hair" is not a really useful texture to paint over.
