A Fall Painting
Dec 4, 2014
Weatherlea. 12x9, oil on linen panel. 2014. This is a small sketch of a scene at Weatherlea Farm in Lovettsville. My aim was to transpose all the colors so the whole painting was saturated with the feeling of fall. I used the modified Ned Jacob palette that I've been experimenting with recently beca...
More Work on the Portrait of Grace
Dec 3, 2014
A continuation of a painting started here: http://www.portraitsbysimonbland.com/blog/post/color-study-and-block-in-for-a-portrait-of-grace I started the opaque layer of the portrait with the face because it's the most important part of the portrait and the obvious center of interest. Beginning...
A Thanksgiving Weekend Painting
Dec 1, 2014
Weatherlea Ram. 14x11, oil on linen panel. 2014 I started this painting as a demo for workshop I held over the weekend. Unfortunately I talked for way too long and only had time to do the block in so I had to do most of the painting work today. The focus of the workshop was on the creative process f...
Color Study and Block In for a Portrait of Grace
Nov 20, 2014
This week I started work on a new portrait. Although I had taken about 100 photographs of the dog, Grace, and had several nice ones to choose from I decided that I could best paint her by combining two of the photos together: one was a good view of her head and the other was a good view of her...
Color Design Using a Sub Set of the Palette
Nov 12, 2014
Color chart for secondary and tertiary mixtures of phthalo blue, alizarin permanent, cad orange, cad yellow medium Sometimes when preparing to start a painting I have to put more thought than usual into the selection of colors. I've just started a small figurative painting of a child ...
A Plein Air Sketch: White Pine
Nov 11, 2014
White Pine. 8x6, oil on linen panel. 2014 I painted this small sketch on location at a home on Mt Gilead near Leesburg, VA. I managed to stop the painting at this point largely due to the intervention of another artist who made some nice remarks about the work in progress....