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.
A Fall Painting
by Simon Bland / 04 Dec 2014
Weatherlea. 12x9, oil on linen panel. 2014. This is a small sketch of a scene at Weatherlea Farm in Lovettsville. My aim was to transpose all the colors so the whole painting was saturated with the feeling of fall. I used the modified Ned Jacob palette that I've been experimenting with recently beca...
More Work on the Portrait of Grace
by Simon Bland / 03 Dec 2014
A continuation of a painting started here: http://www.portraitsbysimonbland.com/blog/post/color-study-and-block-in-for-a-portrait-of-grace I started the opaque layer of the portrait with the face because it's the most important part of the portrait and the obvious center of interest. Beginning...
A Thanksgiving Weekend Painting
by Simon Bland / 01 Dec 2014
Weatherlea Ram. 14x11, oil on linen panel. 2014 I started this painting as a demo for workshop I held over the weekend. Unfortunately I talked for way too long and only had time to do the block in so I had to do most of the painting work today. The focus of the workshop was on the creative process f...
Color Study and Block In for a Portrait of Grace
by Simon Bland / 20 Nov 2014
This week I started work on a new portrait. Although I had taken about 100 photographs of the dog, Grace, and had several nice ones to choose from I decided that I could best paint her by combining two of the photos together: one was a good view of her head and the other was a good view of her...
Color Design Using a Sub Set of the Palette
by Simon Bland / 12 Nov 2014
Color chart for secondary and tertiary mixtures of phthalo blue, alizarin permanent, cad orange, cad yellow medium Sometimes when preparing to start a painting I have to put more thought than usual into the selection of colors. I've just started a small figurative painting of a child ...
A Plein Air Sketch: White Pine
by Simon Bland / 11 Nov 2014
White Pine. 8x6, oil on linen panel. 2014 I painted this small sketch on location at a home on Mt Gilead near Leesburg, VA. I managed to stop the painting at this point largely due to the intervention of another artist who made some nice remarks about the work in progress....
Morning Light
by Simon Bland / 07 Nov 2014
Morning Light. 16x20, oil on linen. 2014. I started work on this painting two months ago and left it hanging unfinished on my studio wall before revisiting the design and adding the sheep this week. I spent a few hours on the sheep and additional layers of glazing and scumbling to bring it clo...
Chicken Sunday
by Simon Bland / 06 Nov 2014
Chicken Sunday. 12x12, oil on linen panel. 2014 Birds continue to be one of my favorite animals to paint: I feel like I have a chance to paint with strong colors and not fuss about the grays. Most of the painting was done with brushes (background: large bristle, bird: long mongoose flat), but I pain...
Romney Sheep at Weatherlea Farm, Lovettsville, VA
by Simon Bland / 05 Nov 2014
Sheep at Weatherlea. 11x14, oil on linen panel. 2014 I painted this sheep from using some photos taken at Weatherlea Farm in Lovettsville as a reference. I played around with a design with pencil on paper and then with paint on a scrap of canvas before committing to the portrait. I used a simple pal...