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.
Shelburne Glebe Revisited
by Simon Bland / 12 Aug 2014
Shelburne Glebe Meadows. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2014. Unable to go painting on location today due to the rain, I spent the day in the studio. After working on a commissioned work this morning, I decided to revisit the plein air painting that I did last week at Shelburne Glebe in Lincoln, VA...
Featherbed Lane
by Simon Bland / 10 Aug 2014
Featherbed Lane. 24x20, oil on linen. 2014. Although I've been planning this painting for a long time, the actual painting part went very quickly: I started this last weekend and, after letting it dry for a week, I did the finishing touches today. In preparation, I did a few pencil scribbles, follow...
The Rabbit Next Door
by Simon Bland / 09 Aug 2014
The Rabbit Next Door. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2014. Even though there are plenty of rabbits in our neighborhood, the hard part of painting them is getting a good photo to use: I have to sneak up on them with my camera and take a few pictures before they bolt. I photographed this rabbit in ou...
Clune Forest Sheep - Work in Progress
by Simon Bland / 06 Aug 2014
A work in progress: 24x30 oil on linen. A new painting that I currently have in progress. I felt compelled to paint in the sheep first and do everything else afterwards. I spent a day and a half working on the design and another day doing the layout before getting to this stage....
Sunset Across the Street
by Simon Bland / 05 Aug 2014
Sunset. 12x9 oil on linen panel. 2014. A sketch of the trees across the street from our house. This is based on a painting of the same scene that I did from life earlier in the year before the grass had greened up in the spring. This time around I tried to paint what I thought would work rathe...
Catoctin View Lane
by Simon Bland / 26 Jul 2014
Catoctin View Lane. 10x8 oil on linen panel. 2014. This is a roadside scene just around the corner from our house, along the back road into our neighborhood. I pass it all the time and thought the look of the dark mass against the light mass would make an interesting sketch. I saved the thicke...
Portrait of Maya
by Simon Bland / 23 Jul 2014
Maya. 16x20, oil on linen. 2014. I used the client's own photos to paint this portrait of Maya. What made the whole thing click was the abstract sense in which there's a cool shadow area in front of a warmly lit background. Since the original photo was taken using a cellphone I struggled to get the ...
Plein Air at Oak Hill, Bluemont
by Simon Bland / 22 Jul 2014
Oak Hill Farm. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2014. I think this is one of my more adventurous plein paintings of the year: I had to work quickly to get the sky down before it changed too much and rearrange elements in the scene in front of me to make a good picture. All while I stood in a horse pasture ...
Studies based on a scene from Copeland Farm in Hillsboro, VA
by Simon Bland / 19 Jul 2014
In July I painted at a plein air session at Copeland Farm in Hillsboro, VA. The painting didn't survive once I got back to the studio, but I was interested in understanding how I could have approached it differently so I resurrected its basic elements in a series of studies: 1. I tri...