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.
David and Max in progress
by Simon Bland / 07 Mar 2016
David and Max (WIP). 26x24, oil on linen. 2016 This is a portrait that I've been working on for the past three months. It's still in progress, but near enough to completion that I feel OK about showing it. The painting is based on a photo taken by Smiley's Studio in Fort Worth, Texas, and us...
Cell Phone Waiting
by Simon Bland / 07 Mar 2016
Cell Phone Waiting. 5x7, oil on linen panel. This was one of those little end-of-the-day sketches, the kind you do when the previous 5 hours in the studio haven't produced anything worthwhile. I based it on a photo I took at Dulles Airport one evening while waiting to pick up my wife. The ground was...
A Very Gray Day
by Simon Bland / 02 Mar 2016
Gray Day. 9x12, oil and cold wax on linen panel. 2016. Rapidly changing conditions and lack of light made for difficult painting conditions today. In retrospect, the cold wax medium also made the painting harder to execute. There's something about this season that can make overcast gray skies f...
Clouds on the Horizon
by Simon Bland / 26 Feb 2016
Clouds on the Horizon. 9x12, oil and cold wax on linen panel. 2016. This was created from a combination of two different field (or should that be beach?) studies in an attempt to recreate the feeling of light in the sky over Puget Sound. Using cold wax medium gave the paint a lot of body. I tried to...
Puget Sound Looking North
by Simon Bland / 24 Feb 2016
Puget Sound North (plein air). 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2016 This high key sketch was done on the beach in Ballard (again!). This view catches my eye every time I go to the beach - over the water the north sky often has a pale blue cast that tends towards orange at the horizon. This was done en...
Ridgeline (plein air)
by Simon Bland / 22 Feb 2016
Ridgeline (plein air). 10x8, oil and cold wax on linen panel. 2016. Since I moved to Seattle, I've had the chance to paint on location several times over the winter. Because the beaches are so accessible, I've painted mostly seascapes. Even though I went to the beach again today I took a different v...
Portrait of Oban
by Simon Bland / 17 Feb 2016
Oban. 12x12, oil on linen panel. 2016. Here's a portrait that I'm putting the finishing touches to. This was done from the customer's own photographs. As you probably can tell, black dogs are really challenging to paint. I like to compare it to playing the piano with just your left hand: it's diffic...
Discovery Park
by Simon Bland / 16 Feb 2016
Discovery Park. 11x14, oil on linen panel. 2016. This painting was done on the beach at Discovery Park in Magnolia. There's a really picturesque lighthouse there which I'll get around to painting some other time. By the time I started working the view across the sound was into the light and the sky ...
Great Northern’s Salmon Bay Bascule Bridge
by Simon Bland / 09 Feb 2016
Ballard Rail Bridge (plein air). 12x9, oil on linen panel. 2016 Are there some things that you feel compelled to do, but every time you try they end up kicking your butt? I think everybody has at least one. For me it is painting engineering structures. Having been educated as an engineer, I loo...