Painting the Setting Sun

One night last August, Larry drove us home through the Annapolis Valley while this sky drama unfolded. That ribbon of orange light that contrasted with the purple-indigo sky was so captivating that I'd wished I could paint it. I snapped these photos with my digital camera. (I never even go to the grocery store without it.)

While I was painting the flower bouquet, I remembered these photos and how I'd always meant to paint the scene. Only at the time, I thought I'd use watercolours. Now that I'm experimenting with oil paints, I really wanted to interpret the scene with my oil paints and oil sticks.

Fortunately, I like to work on several paintings at once. ;-)  I think it keeps my work more spontaneous and it allows time for the oils to dry. So, I set aside the bouquet painting, for now, and pulled out a brand new white canvas. It is always a total thrill to start a new piece, but nerve-wracking too.

These are the steps I took:
1. Squeeze out a line of orange paint.

2. Drag the paint across the canvas with card or a squeegee.

I wanted to blend a pink with the orange in order to get a variation of colour in the sunset.


3.  Apply a hot pink — "Opera" from Holbein.

I don't have very many oil sticks yet, so that's why I'm using colour out of the tube.

4. Squeeze out a line of purple.

I wiped the paint into the canvas with a cotton rag (an old bed-sheet torn into a lot of pieces)! And rubbing and wiping with a cloth is a great way to blend the colours where they meet.

5. Wipe trees into the painting.

It was really difficult to cover that gorgeous orange, but then it wouldn't have been a sunset anymore, would it?

6. More trees, more paint.

You can see that I squeezed more colour out of the tube as well as using my ultramarine oil stick. Late in the game I added a line of yellow to the sunset and blended it in using q-tips.

7. I added yellow afterwards.

The actual colour of the painting is a pretty accurate in this photo. I've only been working in this studio space for a couple of weeks. I was working in the house over the winter — you can see the room through the window. It's the farthest one at the front of the house. This outside studio is much nicer because I can stomp around with my muddy garden boots. Even better, Larry works in here creating metal pieces. I'm going to tell you all about that the next time!

8. Almost there.

I'm happy with the mood I got in this painting. I think it has that mystery  and slight foreboding that I felt about the dark landscape rushing by. It's interesting how differently we perceive a night landscape verses a daytime one.

9. I 'lifted' some tree shapes in the foreground by rubbing off some of the paint.

Oil Painting without Brushes

Painting Detail.

I've been working in the studio on an oil painting and using the techniques that I learned this week at Wayne Boucher's studio. So far, I've applied the paint by

• using mostly oil sticks
• squeezing paint out of tubes directly onto the canvas
• moving it with rags
• scraping it with the rubber end of a pencil
• wiping it away with Q-tips and paper towels
• blending it with my latex-glove covered hands

This is my progress so far.





I mostly used oil sticks, and the tubed oils I'm using are watersoluble which makes the clean-up part so easy!

I didn't like the heaviness of the pot and I wanted to introduce a variety of flower shapes, so I decide to change the painting to a vase of flowers...

I am still working on this painting, but this is what it looked like last night when the sun set. I usually stop then because I really need natural light to see.

The current incarnation of the flowers.

I like the green in the lower part of the painting. I am happy with the soft lost and found effects in the flowers in the upper left hand side of the painting.  I'd like to introduce more of that feeling in the lower part of the painting. The flowers there are too uniform...all the same size, not overlapping and facing straight on.

I'm loving the details and I'm back in the studio today to make the rest of the painting as interesting as those details. It's rather delightful to be painting with unconventional tools as well as using my hands to shape the painting. I'm stepping out into the sunshine of today to the studio to continue. It's back to the drawing board for me!

Oil Painting on the Bay of Fundy

Before today, the last time I had any instruction in oil painting, I was an international student in Germany. That was 40 years ago in East Berlin.

Since then, I've been to lots of watercolour , mono-printing and acrylic painting workshops, but never oil painting. I often think of  oil painters as fairly traditional realists who use muted colours, whereas I prefer strong colours and an expressionistic approach to my subject matter.

Wayne Boucher's Studio is in a former classroom in Parker's Cove.

Last weekend at the Annapolis Region Community Arts Council (ARCAC) Annual General Meeting, I ran into Nova Scotia's celebrated painter Wayne Boucher who breaks all of my stereotypes about oil painters. His work is bold, abstract and etherial. He loves colour and has a background in printmaking, which I think informs his choice of method and materials.