Laying Down Paint : Unfinished Projects

By Elissa Rosenthal

 Hello, everyone! This week I've been working on that unfinished painting I showed you from last week. It is oil paint, though, so in order for me to get the look and kind of detail I want, I will have to wait a while to do the part of Aphrodite, and even longer to do more detailing.

I realized when I was mixing some of my paints, that I stated something incorrectly last week about what type of paint I used as the original background. This, on its own, made me realize more on why I stopped the painting on this canvas back then. I now remember that I was trying out, for giggles, to mix acrylic and oil paint. There is probably some way to properly do this, however, given my lack of experience doing so, it ended up just making it where there was a lot of paint put on the canvas unnecessarily.

Now, this doesn't mean I didn't use quite a bit of paint in my first attempt to salvage this canvas, I did, though I doubt as much as the first time. Luckily, though, I believe I've been able to keep the paint I used for my depiction of Venus in case it needs more detailing. The paint I used for the dolphins, however, ended up becoming more and more muddy, so I had no other choice than to throw it out.

Pallet for Venus

Pallet for dolphins

During the whole painting process, particularly for this part, I mostly focused on larger shapes and values and blocking them in. This is my first time trying to finish an oil painting so I'm quite happy with how it's turning out so far. Not to say I can't do better in the future, I'm sure with practice I can, but it is a good start. One of my main fears right now is not allowing enough time for the paint to dry completely, so, if it doesn't seem completely dry by next weekend I will be doing something else for that posting. For my medium, I just decided to use olive oil. I know it's not a traditional thing to do, to use regular oil as your medium versus using a labeled medium from the store. I've used traditional medium from the store before, however, my current space does not have enough ventilation for it, I have roommates who don't enjoy the smell, and so far using oil seems to work. I will state, though, using olive oil seems to work a lot better than using sesame seed oil, less smell too.

Do you enjoy what I do? Do you want to keep up with other stuff I'm doing?

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