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.
Portrait of Flash: New Painting Step 10
by Simon Bland / 17 Dec 2012
The portrait of Flash with a few changes requested by the customer. Although they were mostly small things I think they made a significant improvement in the overall look. A few more tweaks and I think it will be finished....
Sketch of Pearl
by Simon Bland / 11 Dec 2012
Pearl, oil on linen mounted on board, 12"x12". This is a sketch, rather than a formal portrait, and was done with a very quick turnaround time (and lots of alkyd medium) in order to get it ready for the holidays....
Tree Study
by Simon Bland / 11 Dec 2012
A small painting from the early fall at Ebenezer Church Rd just north of Bloomfield, VA. What drew me to paint the tree were the shadows that the branches were casting on the trunk. I worked in an impressionistic style to prevent the foliage from looking overworked, although the trunk required...
Another landscape with reworked sky
by Simon Bland / 08 Dec 2012
This is another landscape study with a re-worked sky. I broke up the flat expanse of blue sky by adding in some cloud formations which were there in real life, but had been omitted when I first painted this scene. The underlying gradation of value and chroma in the sky gives a very reali...
Landscape study
by Simon Bland / 08 Dec 2012
This is a study for a larger painting which is currently on display and for sale at Hillsborough Vineyards until the end of 2012. Originally painted with a flat grey sky, I used the same technique as in the previous post and scumbled some light, warm grey into the sky around the center of interest. ...
Painting clouds
by Simon Bland / 07 Dec 2012
My efforts to paint cloud formations have met with very mixed results over the years. They often end up too heavy or, worse still, muddy. With this study I set out to paint something more like real cloud formations. I painted the whole sky over with a thin layer of mid-tone grey mixed wit...
Portrait of Flash: New painting step 9
by Simon Bland / 05 Dec 2012
Flash (WIP): 24x30 oil on linen, 2012 The finished painting with all the touch up, edge work and other refinements completed. I have it sitting on the mantlepiece in the family room so I can get a good look at it and enjoy it in natural room light....
Portrait of Flash: New painting step 8
by Simon Bland / 03 Dec 2012
I finally started the process of laying in the background. The most difficult and time consuming part of this was deciding on the best grey to use. Over the course of two hours I tried seven or eight different mixes and finally settled on a simple combination of Grumbacher raw umber and ...
Self portrait in charcoal
by Simon Bland / 30 Nov 2012
Self portrait from life. 2012. I used homemade charcoal made from some honeysuckle vines that were cut down last year. I wrapped the vines in foil and cooked them in the barbeque at 400F for three hours. I was able to get four values from the charcoal alone. The slightly off-white paper ...