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.
Warm Morning Sky
by Simon Bland / 12 May 2015
Warm Morning Sky. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2015 Today's paint out with the Loudoun Sketch Club was back to Trappe Farm in Upperville, VA. Before starting a larger work (which didn't turn out well) I did a small "warm up" painting to try and capture a feeling of the warm sky in the east. ...
Barn Cat
by Simon Bland / 07 May 2015
Barn Cat. 12x9, oil on linen panel. 2015. Composition and palette are fundamental elements of my work. Today I revisited an older painting that I thought would benefit from a different approach to both. The original panel was divided into a light half and a dark half. The barn door in shadow be...
The View from Trappe Farm
by Simon Bland / 05 May 2015
The View from Trappe Farm, 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2015. The first official paint-out of the season with Loudoun Sketch Club was a warm day. I found a nice location up the hill which had a view across the whole of the Loudoun Valley. After first doing a small color sketch of the same scene I...
Piletina
by Simon Bland / 04 May 2015
Piletina. 12x12, oil on linen panel. 2015. More than anything else, I wanted this painting to be about the light and the way it varied in intensity from top to bottom and front to back. My starting point was a reference photo taken last year. There was out-of-focus chicken wire in the foreground whi...
A Few Small Outdoor Sketches
by Simon Bland / 04 May 2015
North Sky. 6x4, oil on linen. 2015. Looking Towards the Catoctin Mountain. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2015. Trappe Farm Sketch. 5x7, oil on linen panel. 2015. These are a couple of small studies done over the weekend from our back yard and one done on location at Trappe Farm in Upperville, VA. Worki...
One More Painting Out in the Back Yard
by Simon Bland / 02 May 2015
No Edges in the Sky. 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2015 What a great day to be painting outside! Standing in the shade of a pine tree this afternoon I could only hear the sound of birds and someone in the far distance mowing their yard. The spring greens have arrived in full force and, as usual, it take...
Studies
by Simon Bland / 27 Apr 2015
Spring Skies. 7x5, oil on linen panel. 2015 Fortune smiled on me today and I managed to do four small studies: two in the studio in preparation for larger paintings, and two done outside in the back yard. After spending all winter painting in the studio it was a huge treat to be able to lug my gear ...
Daisy
by Simon Bland / 22 Apr 2015
Daisy. 12x12, oil on linen panel. 2015. This is another small painting for which I did a color study. Like many of my recent works, I spent more time on the edges than anything else. They helped to give the figure some life and prevent it looking like a cut-out....
Painting the Light (A Work in Progress)
by Simon Bland / 19 Apr 2015
Stoney Point. 14x18, oil on linen. 2015 WIP This is one of those paintings that sits in the studio for a long time while I chip away at it. What drew me in was the way the point of the roof looks against the light of the sky. Unfortunately I started without a clear focal point in the picture, a...