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.
Painting on Location in Waterford, VA
by Simon Bland / 14 May 2014
Talbot Farm I. 9" x 12" oil on panel. 2014 This is the first outing of the season for our local group of plein air painters. I decided to attempt a painting of the barns and it proved to be a challenging scene as the sun was partially towards me, something I usually try to avoid. I also w...
Meadow Grove Farm - A Limited Palette
by Simon Bland / 05 May 2014
Meadow Grove. 11" x 14" oil on linen panel. 2014 I'm gearing up for the first of my summer shows: Upperville Stable Tour, over Memorial Day weekend and the Western Loudoun Artist Studio Tour the third weekend in June. This latest painting is a landscape that I've been contemplating for a coupl...
Chicken Thursday
by Simon Bland / 10 Apr 2014
Chicken Thursday. approx. 16" x 16" oil on linen. Unmounted. 2014. The latest painting off the easel. It is currently unmounted so there are a few natural hills and valleys in the surface of the linen which you can see in this image. This is one of the chickens I photographed last weekend at G...
A New Pochade Box
by Simon Bland / 10 Apr 2014
Some images and a brief description of a home-made pochade box....
Old Waterford Road
by Simon Bland / 31 Mar 2014
Old Waterford Road. 9" x 12" oil on linen panel. 2014. A small landscape study that I finished last week. I took a few photos during a recent snowstorm and thought this scene would made a basis for an interesting painting. The trees were difficult to render without overdoing: as is often...
A Landscape In Progress
by Simon Bland / 30 Mar 2014
I started this painting as a demo for a local high school class (I was just demonstrating the start process). After first working out the design of the painting on paper, I used a thin monochrome wash of yellowish raw umber mixed with a little liquin and applied the block in very quickly by ...
Fine Art Professionals of Northern Virginia Spring Exhibition
by Simon Bland / 29 Mar 2014
I dropped off my two paintings for the show today in the snow, rain and hail. The arts center is a beautiful building, right by the old canal in downtown Frederick....
Milltown Road Barn Sketch
by Simon Bland / 20 Mar 2014
Milltown Road Barn Sketch. 8" x 10" oil on linen panel. 2014 This is a sketch of a barn in Lovettsville on the main road down to Waterford. It's not a location that would be good to paint due to the traffic so I pulled to the side of the road and snapped some photos with my phone one day when ...
A New Portrait of Nikko
by Simon Bland / 20 Mar 2014
Nikko - repaint. 20" x 16" oil on linen panel. 2014 I painted this portrait of Nikko over the course of two days this week on top of a block in that I had completed two weeks ago. With the block-in dry and working on a very familiar subject I was able to get the final layer on in a single day, howev...