Every three or four years I try to stimulate my creativity by changing to a different medium, technique or subject matter. Since I’m still fascinated with autumn landscapes, this time I’m changing from watercolors and acrylics to oils, as well as trying some new color combinations.
My professional career started with oil paintings and I enjoyed them for many years. My technique at that time used a lot of turpentine-thinned oil washes and after a while I got into trouble with them. I developed a severe allergic reaction to all thinners and had flu-like symptoms, severe headaches and constant tinnitus. When I quit painting with thinners and switched to water -based paints, all my symptoms disappeared except for the tinnitus, which still persists.
LAYERED PAINT FILMS
The last few years I have been painting with the slow-drying acrylics and building up the layers of paint over textures to create my foliage- filled landscapes. Those acrylics were the closest to oil paints I had used in years. Finally, I experimented with doing the same technique, but with oils instead of acrylics and was thrilled with the results. It takes a lot of preliminary planning of the different layers of paint and the drying time between layers is much longer than with acrylics, but I’m finally getting control of the effects I want.
SOLVING THE THINNER PROBLEM
One thing that has made a big difference for me is using a small blender type brush so I don’t need any thinner or even linseed oil to apply the oil paint. I use a different brush for each color and at the end of the day I clean them with “pink soap”, which has no fumes and only a slight almond odor. I clean the oil paint off my hands with waterless hand cleaner.
Below is one of my new oil paintings, a 40″ x 30″ canvas titled “Riverbend Series #3.
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