Inspiration

I recently saw an exhibit of Roberta Richman's abstract landscape paintings.  What intrigued me most was that she used oil sticks and they were very textured.  When I got to the studio, I dragged out my oil sticks and started messing around.

I started out with an 8 x 8 and turned it into a landscape, using my usual color pallet.

Then a couple of days later I just decided to use a bugger piece of paper and scratch some texture into it.  I was still in stripe mode.

Then as I was cleaning up for the evening, I stacked the papers up and I thought this looked pretty good. 

I'm not sure how she got the texture but my guess would be that she mixed the oil sticks with Dorland's Wax.  I plan on doing some more experiments on this.

Recent Work

Here are two recent 8 x 10 oils I have done.  I am fairly pleased with the results on both,

A goodie from the bakery

This was from a photo

The Big Show

Today I took advantage of the nice weather instead of being holed up in the studio.  I walked downtown which it seemed like a long time ago and stopped in to see the Big Show put on by the Art League of Rhode Island.  The criteria was to have at least one side a minimum of 36 inches.  Since I have been working small, I only had a couple of pieces to be considered so I passed on the opportunity.  The work was interesting and there was a lot to see.  So in keeping with working small, I did this 8 x 10 oil based on one of my photos from San Miguel.  It only took me a couple of hours and I was quite pleased with the results.

New Work

I decided to rework a wood panel canvas that is bigger than what I usually work with, a 24 x 30.  The back ground is textured with cheesecloth, plaster and papers then topped with acrylic paint.  I added subtle circles with my favorite water soluble oil pastels.  I drew the bicycle with a pastel pencil and toned it down with water and rubbing.  Now I am wondering if the seat is a little too big.