A Blog About Oil Painting
Welcome to my blog. Here you'll find me rambling on about all sorts of things related to art in general and oil painting in particular. There's even a recipe for dog cookies hidden away somewhere.
Like the rest of the site, this section is still a work in progress and I will be making it tider and easier to navigate in time. There is a lot of content, so using the buttons below may help you to get around. Newest posts are shown first.
Tater and Madeleine
by Simon Bland / 04 Oct 2016
Tater and Madeleine. 16x20, oil on linen. 2016 Here's a look at the latest portrait that I'm just finishing. It was originally intended to be a sketch, but all the ideas that I worked on in the design stage eventually coalesced into this more finished affair. The reference photos were taken inside w...
Edges
by Simon Bland / 25 Sep 2016
Edge Study, black and white oil paint, about 8x10. 2016 I'm finishing up my book on painting animals. You knew I was writing a book, right? On reading through the manuscript once again, I finally admitted to myself that it needed a better discussion of edges - something I'd tried to avoid because it...
Fishing Boat WIP
by Simon Bland / 19 Sep 2016
Vampy (WIP). 12x12, oil on linen panel. 2016 You know it's been a long and difficult painting day when the trash bag that contains your discarded paper towels weighs more than the plywood panel you were painting on. This side view is a painting that I was working on and really struggling with today....
Meadow Land. A Re-Worked Painting
by Simon Bland / 16 Sep 2016
Meadow Land. 6x11 approx., oil on linen panel. 2016 Over the course of the year the reject pile in my studio has grown ever larger. Even though I often purge it of the truly bad stuff, it still holds more work than I'd like. To this end, I decided to split the pile into four smaller groups: Things ...
Darla R, Plein Air Painting of a Fishing Boat
by Simon Bland / 15 Sep 2016
Darla R (plein air). 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2016 I spent most of the day at Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal painting on the main dock. The morning started out overcast and gray which made for ideal painting conditions. Although I originally worked on a smaller panel, I came to my senses, scraped i...
Study: Mid Winter Sky
by Simon Bland / 12 Sep 2016
Mid Winter Sky. 5x10 ? oil on linen panel. 2016 This is one of those little sketches that I have sitting around the studio (actually, I have a pile of them) that I occasionally pull out and use as a reference. It's not a painting that I think I will ever sell: not only is it kind of abstract, it's a...
Plein Air Washington at the Center for Wooden Boats
by Simon Bland / 10 Sep 2016
Wooden Boats (plein air). 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2016. Saturday was my first chance to get out and paint with Plein Air Washington. We painted at the Center for Wooden Boats which is right on the south shore of Lake Union in Seattle. This painting is an example of why I usually try to avoid man-m...
Red!
by Simon Bland / 06 Sep 2016
Red. 11x14, oil on linen. 2016 This portrait of Red was finished last week. Like many commissioned portraits he got a few little tweaks once his owners had had a chance to see a preview of the painting. I used the Ned Jacob palette for most of the colors, together with some burnt sienna (mixed with ...
Taking a Walk in the Fog
by Simon Bland / 01 Sep 2016
Foggy Morning. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2016. When we had some early morning fog late this summer, I took the opportunity to get outside and take some photos before it lifted. This small sketch was done from some of those references: a study in foggy atmospherics, a way of preparing for the winter t...