Fear Conquered

Roughly a fortnight ago, being the last of week of July, I was spurred to action in the painting department. I had, before starting this site, set myself a challenge to complete a painting a month. In June I completed Stormbringer; a large painting of a dragon, which I'm donating.

This month, I decided that I ought to tackle one of my greatest painting fears - oil paint.

Oil paint has always terrified me. Despite taking art class all throughout my high school career, I never once touched oil paint. I found it terribly thick and difficult to work with. I thought that I would not be able to contend with the medium ever.

Earlier this year, I was determined to face this negative impression of my ability and took it up on myself to learn how to paint with oils. To that end, I acquired a membership to skillshare.com, and began my first ever painting course in oils. The end goal was a geometric abstract piece.

To be quite honest, I'd rather forgotten about the painting, concentrating as I was on my leather pieces, until last week. So, on Tuesday, I sat down and completed the skillshare lesson. Part of that lesson was to sketch in a series of thumbnails, each of overlapping squares, rectangles and circles, creating geometric designs.

Abstract is not my style, but I did give it a good go. Of course, because I cannot help but to be representative, even when I'm trying to be abstract, my eye and imagination gravitated towards the one design that I had drawn an unlabelled Venn Diagram in the centre. And, with my mind being what it is, I couldn't have the diagram be nothing, so I turned it into an abstract flower was I painted.

​The end result is not terrible.

Buy Original

Buy Prints

Out of the tube, the paint was indeed thick and unworkable. I had to apply paint thinner, which did make the paint more workable, but it also made it dry quite quickly. Indeed, there didn't feel all that much different working in oils than it did acrylics, given how quickly the paint dried when mixed with the thinner.

Granted, the paint might have been difficult, or dried so quickly,  because the paints themselves were not especially expensive, given that they were oil paints. I am not experienced enough with oils to tell if that's indeed the case. Should I earn anything from my art, I will try and invest in different oils to compare. For now, however, these will have to do.

For my next painting, I have to take a trip to my local Wallack's to pick up some long canvases. There is another canvas in the house I can use, and I have an idea what I intend to paint with it, so perhaps I'll do that painting instead of the one for which I've already done a sketch for.

It will also be an oil painting. I'm no longer quite so terrified of the medium as I once was.