Tag: Oil painting tools

  • The Project from Hell

    The project from hell is the one that has at least 27 more steps to it than initially envisioned, and each step consists of 1 step forward followed fairly quickly by 1.9999 (or sometimes 4.999999) back. So, take 20 miles of a dry lake bed, Summer Lake, seen in September from a relatively inaccessible spot…

  • Paintings from Pine Creek: Finale

    In preparing for our extended visit to the old family home,  Cedar Pines, along Pine Creek in northern Pennsylvania, I realized that the lush green landscape required more than my usual travel supply of small boards. I needed ampler materials so I could stretch myself into the landscape. Lots of artists don’t work large, and…

  • Petrified Forest, Relationships Grouped: “Natural Monuments”

    As I have been stumbling to explain, my plein air experience is infinitely larger, more amazing and important, than my plein air paintings. It’s inevitable, the smells, the sights, the history, the culture, geology, geography, the wind and sun and sky — only tiny bits of this can be encompassed in any single painting. And…

  • Petrified Forest Residency, Day 5, September 30, 2010

    Sept 30, 2010 6 AM: This (early) morning we went to southern entrance of park, where a stabilized  petrified-wood building, dated around 1250 AD, is located. It’s about a mile up an easy walking trail and represents something of the Puebloan culture that inhabited this area. Officially called Agate House, the structure has been stabilized…

  • Working the Center: Day 22, Nov 22, 2009

    A shortish day today. Lots of visitors, including old friends Fred and Betty, from last February, when they kept an eye on me from  Rhyolite, where they were caretakers. It was good to see them again; we spent a  couple hours just catching up. It was Fred and Betty with whom we traveled down Titus…

  • Sometimes a Great Notion: Day 21, Nov. 21, 2009

    This was a hard-working day at the Studio. I didn’t mean it to be — I just kept seeing  More To Be Done. I worked the center panels, particularly the central one, very hard today, using Liquin as if it were water. I also got to use my spatula-like tool, of which I’m very fond,…

  • Desert Tour and the Long Slope: Day 14, Nov 14, 2009

    At 1 PM today, three hours before Jer was scheduled to pick me up, I decided I had chosen the wrong vocation. I would make a much better house painter than fine arts oil painter wannabee. I started the day OK. I hung the little masonite panels, which aren’t finished but which needed to be…

  • Trauma du jour, averted. Day 13, Nov 13, 2009

    Friday the 13th. Which I’ve always, contrariwise, maintained was a good luck day for me. And it was, as my lost Fed Ex package, for which I paid 4 times the actual cost to have two-day shipping and which I desperately needed to get on with painting, was found at the Beatty Merc, having been…

  • Back to Work: Day 11, Nov. 11, 2009

    A friend suggested I might be a tad too obsessed with my painting project and not adequately admiring the desert as I did last time I was at the Amargosa. While I allowed that this couldn’t possibly be the case, I did take a longer walk in my territory today and found one of the…

  • Rest and Recreation, Day 10, Nov. 10, 2009

    I took the day off. Completely off. Didn’t go to the Red Barn. Didn’t approach Rhyolite. Didn’t go up the Beatty Cut-off. Nope. Stayed home. Went for a Tuesday Drive with Jer. Took a nap. Drank a bit of wine. Got rested. I got up feeling tired and was then seriously put out to discover…