The Secrets of the Snow Queen: An Eco Tale

I have illustrated my first publication!  Titled The Secrets of the Snow Queen, An Eco Tale written by Ruth Asher. This Eco Tale invites the reader into a fairy tale setting, including an evil queen, a captured child, a quest, talking animals, even a goofy gargoyle. At its heart, however, is a contemporary issue about living harmoniously with plants that supply us with food, animals at risk, and one another.  Big kids and little kids might enjoy receiving a copy of The Secrets of the Snow Queen.

The book is available for purchase at McNally Robinson and online at amazon.com as an ebook.

Oil Painting Methods

Oil painting methods have not really changed much in over 100 years. A quote  from “The Painters Methods and Materials” 1926. 

“In the first place it (oil) changes in refractive index with age.  This begins from the moment the oil paint, painted out in a thin layer has begun to dry.  The dry paint is already not so opaque, not so brilliant, as the paint squeezed out of the tube.  This change goes on slowly but remorselessly through the years, though, of course, at a diminishing rate.  We know that the slow chemical changes which take place in the linseed oil film are not complete after four hundred years,  that the film is still improving in toughness and insolubility. ……..The pigments then are growing deeper in tone and more translucent, and hence it is that we have pentimenti, the under-paintings ultimately showing through.”

This is the beauty of oil paint, that as it ages the colours become more transparent and richer in tone.  The aging process allows light to shine through the layers of colour into the painting in effect blending the layers of colour together.  Even heavy impasto will change over time deepening in tone and developing an oil laden gleam that catches the light and emphasizes the presence of texture in the painting.  This will remain throughout the life of the painting and in fact improve as the painting ages. 

One of my favourite quotes by Ted Godwin in The Studio Handbook for Working Artists: A Survival Manual.

"An acrylic painting will never look as good as the day you finished painting it, however an oil painting will never look as bad as the day you finished painting it.”

Industry, oil on canvas, 2010: Private Collection

Painterly Challenge

Why not paint with acrylics instead of oils?  Acrylics have several advantages.  They are water soluble and there are lots of mediums available that can help make acrylic paint imitate oils.  Moreover there are mediums that can allow an artist to paint with thick heavy impasto with very low risk of cracking as it dries and enables an artist to paint quickly as acrylics dry very fast.

Oil paint on the other hand can be tricky.  You are required to paint in layers allowing each to dry as you proceed.  The use of underpainting white, thinner, and wingel expedites this process by speeding drying time.  However you are still required to allow for drying time before putting one colour over another or you risk making a muddy mess of your colours.  Just to make it even more challenging as a painting dries oil will rise to the surface making it difficult for the next layer of paints to bind to the surface.  If you use too much oil mixed in with pigment you can lower the tone of the colour or impede the paints ability to bind while not enough oil will do the same.  The ready availability of colours in tubes along with various mediums take much of the guess work out of oil painting but knowing when to stop painting is important to a successful painting

Interrogate Space, Oil on canvas, 2009: Private Collection

Painterly Challenge

Every once in a while I do a painting that just does not want to be painted. 

At the outset of this painting I carefully planned my landscape, drawing it out in charcoal and planning where the colours would go.  I then executed an underpainting blocking some of the basic forms and the darker areas using raw umber and some lighter shades of the colours I wanted to fiinish the painting with.  The palette for this painting lime green,  red orange, chcolate brown and ceruleian blue.  I let the underpainting dry.   Then I started brushing thin coats of colour mixed with linseed oil.  Intent upon building the layers as I paint; fat over lean, light to dark to get the full effect of layering oils and to bring out the light through the colours.  A half an hour of concentrating intently as I paint and the drool starts to form at the corner of my mouth.  Next thing I am leaning back in my chair, brush in hand, head back, mouth open with snores softly issuing.

I awake abruptly feeling refreshed.  I chuckle as I realize that once again I am trying to subvert my nature as a painter.  I love to paint but usually with heavy impasto.  I love the texture of paint mixed to the consistancy of butter and then slathered onto the canvas.  The very fact that I fell asleep while doing my own painting, well its kind of sad, but simply demonstrates that I was bored out of my skull.

A painters style is something developed over time, most often over years of work. I believe that it is marked by what the artist finds most exciting about painting mixed at times with a little dose of luck. Whether an artist paints realistic, impressionistic, abstract, expressionist etc., the primary requirement to developing your skill is to paint and to keep on painting but paint what interests you.

Ordinariness and Inspiration

I took a snap as we were passing by mostly because something about the features drew my eye. The dull grey sky flattens the light and the ethereal quality of this image is enhanced by drawn and heavy clouds suspended over twin humps of forest in the distance. Railway lines, phone and hydro lines trace the boundaries of wilderness and act as familiar markers delineating the flatness of prairie.

Robert Kroetsch writes in Seed Catalogue of the indelible imagery of the Canadian landscape. His prairies are spare dry and dusty boned; the seeds of growth and the patterns of prairie life are unearthed touching upon a place that dominates as it nurtures. His poetry recalls the plainness of the prairies much like the place in this photograph. To me Kroetsch's poems drum a message of Canadian prairie and prairie living that inspires a host of familiar memories and images from the countryside I grew up in.  When you look at something that is so familiar its familiarity makes it ordinary you have to make an effort to appreciate the beauty.  To really see what makes a place remarkable you need to recognize its power, its ability to unite us and invoke a sense of the sacred.  This is what inspires me to paint.

Yesterday in the studio I noticed a couple of tiny tears in a painting I just completed a few days ago. The edges of the tiny cuts were frayed and had absorbed some pigment so the cuts likely opened after I had painted the canvas. Its difficult to say for sure if the damage occurred at the store where I bought the canvas or after the painting was completed. Either way the painting needed to be repaired since this is a painting for a good friend.

The picture above shows my process of repairing a canvas with a hole in it. I cut a piece of canvas a lot larger than the cuts which were only about 1/4 of an inch long. The canvas patch is primed on both sides. I prime the back of the painting and place the patch over the cuts and then prime over all. I place a piece of plastic and a board on top of the patch and then the weight to flatten all. I have to remove all of this a couple of times and check the front, wiping away the squeeze out since I don't really want primer all over my painting. The only trouble with having to do this on an oil painting is the paint gets compressed so the weight should be just big enough for the repair.

The above image shows the cut area and the small amount of squeeze out of gesso which of course is needed to paint on in order to cover the repair. The repair is the vertical brownish mark in the middle of this picture happily it is not noticeably discernible as it blends into the back ground. It will be very easy to finish the repair on the front. At this point the back will require a second coat of primer just to be sure all is secure.

Here is the finished painting titled Riding Mountain, oil on canvas, 2011.