A Blog About Oil Painting
Welcome to my blog. Here you'll find me rambling on, unassisted by AI, 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.
Preparing Linen - A Short How-To Guide
by Simon Bland / 13 Apr 2016
In this blog post I show you how to prepare and prime linen and cotton canvas for painting. This step-by-step guide will help you create your own high quality painting surfaces for a fraction of the cost. ...
Color Studies - Working Through Ideas Part II
by Simon Bland / 13 Apr 2016
Study: Meadows at One Trick Farm. 6x8, oil on canvas panel. 2016 Continuing on from yesterday's blog post, the other thing that helps me to decide whether a painting will work or not is to try it out on a small scale. Among other things, this lets me to figure out the palette I will use in advance, ...
Charcoal Studies - Working Through Ideas Part I
by Simon Bland / 12 Apr 2016
Charcoal Sketches on paper (full sheet). 2016 Before investing a lot of time, effort and materials in a painting, I find it's always helpful to first work though my idea on paper. Simple studies like these help me to test out the compositions and make sure they have a good chance of working. I can m...
Discovery Park on Foot
by Simon Bland / 06 Apr 2016
Field Study: Discovery Park 040716. 6x12, oil on canvas panel. 2016. Moving from the Virginia countryside the city of Seattle has forced me to take on a different type of landscape in my paintings; I spent much of the winter trying to paint gray seascapes. However, in Discovery Park there is ...
Breaking the Ice with Leftovers
by Simon Bland / 06 Apr 2016
Trough Hill III. 6x12, oil on canvas panel. 2016 Procrastination is my forte. I've been finding other things to do for the past week rather than get back to the easel and start painting again. Since I was unable to get out of the house today, I decided to break the ice on the new studio and do some ...
Discovery Park. Plein air by bike.
by Simon Bland / 30 Mar 2016
Field Study: Discovery Park 033116. 6x8, oil on canvas panel. 2016 This was painted at Discovery Park in Magnolia today. Since it's such a large area and off limits to road vehicles, I decided to park my car at one of the lots and ride in on my bike. My bike doesn't have a luggage rack so this requi...
Late Summer
by Simon Bland / 25 Mar 2016
Late Summer. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2016 This is a small painting I did at the studio in Ballard from a reference photo that I took at a plein air painting location in Virginia. Working at this size is great for finding ways to simplify the landscape and use more expressive paint handling. Spring ...
Spring Gales
by Simon Bland / 10 Mar 2016
Spring Gales. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2016 Working outside this morning took more fortitude than usual: 30mph winds make for a challenging environment. I tied everything down and stood in the shelter of a sad-looking bush that grows at the end of the beach. Despite all that, it was enjoyable to ha...
Light in the Sky - a study
by Simon Bland / 08 Mar 2016
Light in the Sky - study. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2016. This is a study that I painted as a way to explore a different take on representing light in the sky. I based it on some plein air sketches. Having painted landscapes in Virginia for so long, I've become used to working with the hierarchy of ...