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.
Sketch Marathon Day 9: A Seago Palette
by Simon Bland / 09 May 2016
Golden Gardens Beach. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 This painting is ostensibly of Golden Gardens beach, with a lot of clutter removed and the layout of the beach slightly altered. It's a scene that I've tried to paint before without success. Today, I spent more time developing the composition usin...
Sketch Marathon Day 8: Back to the Water
by Simon Bland / 07 May 2016
Soar. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 A customer gave me some great feedback on the seascape I did earlier in the week. With that in mind I revisited one of the plein air themes I'd worked on over the winter. My goal was to put more in the foreground: this started off as waves and beach but, after ad...
Sketch Marathon Day 7: Working Directly from Notan Sketches
by Simon Bland / 06 May 2016
North Bluff. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2016 Today I took a bit of a different turn in my sketch-a-thon. Because I had other things that I needed to get done, I was only able to get a couple of sketches finished. I revisited some of the scraped-off field studies that I did yesterday, working from a co...
Sketch Marathon Day 6: Olympic Peninsula
by Simon Bland / 05 May 2016
Olympic Peninsula (plein air). 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 Of the four field studies that I did today, this is the only one I decided to keep. Despite the grandiose title, I painted this at the Smith Cove Park marina here in Magnolia, just 5 minutes from our house. I timed my arrival (accidentall...
Sketch Marathon Day 5: Showers
by Simon Bland / 04 May 2016
Showers. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 Another big effort today to keep up with my self imposed goal. I made several attempts to start another small painting, but I found myself getting too caught up in detail to make any of them work. In addition to this oil sketch, I also made about a dozen small...
Sketch Marathon Day 4: Discovery Park
by Simon Bland / 03 May 2016
Field Study: Discovery Park 050316. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 And then there are difficult days! Today I decided to take my sketch marathon outdoors. I started a different painting three times (scraping it off after each attempt), before turning around and painting a different view. I was final...
Sketch Marathon Day 3: Berlin Turnpike
by Simon Bland / 02 May 2016
Berlin Turnpike. 8x10, oil and cold wax on linen panel. 2016 As I work through the sketches each day, every painting becomes a learning experience. I slowed myself down and took a little longer with this painting, for example. I also added warmer light to the tops of the trees and telephone pole to ...
Sketch Marathon Day 2: Winter Dawn
by Simon Bland / 30 Apr 2016
Since I have a large number of panels on hand, I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks working on some sketches and studies based on notan designs. By producing at least two oil sketches and a dozen or so notan sketches each day, I aim to start generating some ideas for larger works that I can p...
Sketch Marathon Day 1: Morning, 25 December
by Simon Bland / 29 Apr 2016
Morning, 25 December. 8x8, oil and cold wax on linen panel. 2016 I remember this morning like it was yesterday. We'd had a light snowfall overnight and the morning was cold and slightly misty. The light was so captivating that I grabbed my camera and ran outside to take some photographs. We could of...