It’s Not Much…

Look! Look! I’m oil painting again. Yeah, all right. I know. It’s not much… but it is a start.

What you see here are the beginning brushstrokes of a landscape painting inspired by a live online class. Look closely and you’ll notice the rough graphite outlines of the scene. It’s a familiar landscape setting — mountains in the background, tall pines, a river, and lots of rocks. It will be a great opportunity for me to refresh my skills on these different landscape elements.

But first, I’ll have to get new paints. My cerulean blue was still usable, and my original plan was to mix several tints using titanium white, and then add a slight touch of Naples yellow to white and create clouds floating through the sky. Sadly, my large tube of titanium white is absolutely unusable. No way can I open it.

So, after making this very tentative start, I’m already on hold, and that’s actually a good thing. I don’t yet have the studio quite ready for any serious oil painting projects. I need to move a few things around, clean off my big glass palette, and go through all my brushes again.

The color you see in the sky right now may look a bit thick and thin, and that’s intentional. I do want to create some wispy effects once I go in with titanium white and then also begin adding additional lights and shadows to the clouds.

So, while there’s not much to look at right now, at least I’ve been back at the easel, paintbrush in hand. It was fun, and I’m looking forward to refreshing my paints and palette and bringing this painting to completion.