Yes, yes, I know, it has been four months since my last post. You got bored. Well, wedding planning, honeymooning, the holidays... all that took a higher priority. The wedding was wonderful, though, just so you know. And married life has been fantastic. So I guess that's a fair trade off, in the end. Our honeymoon was lots of fun, but who knew that Hawaii could get downpours every day for two weeks straight? We found that out the hard way. But it's true what they say, rain does bring rainbows. And hopefully some of the pictures we took there will find their way into paintings sooner or later.
Since I have been out of practice, I decided to take a class to get me back into painting mode. The class I'm taking is Renaissance Painting Techniques at the Massachusetts College of Art. This technique is actually quite different from the way I usually paint. Typically, I've done more direct painting. Meaning that I pretty much paint the color that I want something to be right away, and I usually finish paintings in one or two sittings. Well, that's not how the Dutch and Italian masters did it back in the old days. They did paintings in many stages and layers, creating images of great depth and luminosity. So that's what I'm learning to do now. But each painting takes 8 weeks or more to complete! Even though each stage of the painting might only take an hour or so to do, you then have to wait for the paint to dry before moving on to the next step. Since it's oil paint, it usually takes a week before it's dry enough to add the next layer. Which begs the question, when am I going to have anything new to post here? Patience young grasshopper. I do have three paintings in progress, but they won't be done for five or six more weeks. And so far they're just brown and white. So there's not much to see. But I will post them as they get finished. And if I do anything else of interest, I'll put that up, too.
