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.