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.
Product Review: Gamblin FastMatte
by Simon Bland / 25 Feb 2020
In this blog post I explain how to use Gamblin Fast Matte and why I think it's an essential part of my paint box....
September Paintings
by Simon Bland / 08 Oct 2019
Some of the paintings that left my easel in the early fall....
A Summer's Worth of Painting
by Simon Bland / 09 Sep 2019
A look at some of the new work I created over the summer months....
An Easy Way to Rescue Failed Paintings
by Simon Bland / 19 Jul 2019
One advantage of painting on panels is that you can occasionally salvage a painting by removing part of it with a saw. In this blog post I show some of the pieces I recently created by cropping down old paintings....
What is Liquin and How Do I Use It?
by Simon Bland / 22 May 2019
For this blog post I wanted to talk about using Liquin in your own oil paintings. Although the information available online has improved in leaps and bounds, I think this will help to bridge the experience gap that new artists might have and prevent some easy-to-make mistakes, too....
Three Lessons I Learned About Seascape Painting
by Simon Bland / 10 May 2019
A look at some new seascape paintings and a brief discussion of some of the basic principles involved in creating them....
Extended Block-In Method for Landscape Paintings
by Simon Bland / 14 Mar 2019
This article describes the way in which I've enhanced my block-in techniques to create a more fluid and abstract base for my landscape paintings. ...
Recent Work: Feb 2019—the winter stretch
by Simon Bland / 05 Feb 2019
This blog post shows some of that the new paintings that are coming off the easel this winter. It's a mixture of different things, including some that have been in the studio for ages....
Recent Work: Starting the New Year
by Simon Bland / 08 Jan 2019
Work coming off the easel in Jan 2019....