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.
Waterford Art Harvest
by Simon Bland / 01 Oct 2015
The forecast for more bad weather finally did it and the Waterford Homes Tour and Crafts Exhibit (otherwise known to everyone in Loudoun County as the Waterford Fair) was cancelled. Some of the activities have been rescheduled as a new event on October 17 & 18: Waterford Art Harvest. This event ...
Return to Trough Hill Farm
by Simon Bland / 29 Sep 2015
Corner of the Field. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2015 Today's paint out was a return to Trough Hill Farm in Middleburg, VA. The sky was overcast and dark all morning. Fortunately the rain held off until mid afternoon. After walking around the property I settled on a corner of one of the back fields as...
Paint Out at Trough Hill Farm
by Simon Bland / 22 Sep 2015
Although started on location, this painting underwent several revisions in the studio over the next three years....
Paint Out at Bronze Hill Farm
by Simon Bland / 15 Sep 2015
Today's paint out was at Bronze Hill Farm in Middleburg, VA. It was a near-perfect day for working outside. As usual I started with a small 5x7 to get myself in the mood. I ghosted-in the image with raw umber (applied with a paper towel) then troweled on the paint and finished by working the edges w...
Wind Field Farm (plein air and studio work)
by Simon Bland / 02 Sep 2015
Wind Field Farm (plein air). 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2015 As September arrives the colors of the sky and landscape start to transform and the yellows get darker. It's tempting try and convey the sense of early fall by adding orange to all the paint, but that doesn't always work out well; I toned t...
A WIP of a New Horse Portrait
by Simon Bland / 02 Sep 2015
Block In for New Horse Portrait. 24x20, oil on linen. 2015 This is the block in for the commissioned horse portrait I'm currently working on. I did this in two stages: a careful drawing and separation of the light and shadow with raw umber, and when that had dried I applied layers of terra rosa/yell...
Charcoal Study for New Horse Portrait
by Simon Bland / 29 Aug 2015
Charcoal Study for New Horse Portrait. approx 20x16. 2015 While I usually do these value designs as small 5x7 pencil sketches, when I’m working on a larger portrait I will often take a full sheet of paper and work out the design in charcoal. It helps to give a feel for the scale of what I'm ab...
Mountain Road, Hillsboro
by Simon Bland / 27 Aug 2015
(Updated June 2016) This is an oil painting I've had on and off the easel for a year. It took a long time and a lot of perseverance to find the right value scale, color palette and composition....
Retired: A Horse at Little Fiddlers Green
by Simon Bland / 26 Aug 2015
This oil painting in progress is of a horse I saw a couple of years ago at a paint out at Little Fiddlers Green in Bluemont, VA. I was taken by the look of the light falling across the body and the motif of the spots in the coat....