Genesis Heat Set Oil Paints

Tulips-Genesis Oil Paints

Boy!  Has it really been so long since I've posted here?  Life has a way of getting in the way of stuff you want to do, doesn't it?

I haven't been painting over the past few months as we did a bit of traveling over the summer then a friend of mine was getting married and I had promised to help with the wedding.

She's married now and I'm beginning to get back to painting!  Being the art supply junkie I am, I bought some Genesis Heat Set Oil paints some time ago but am only now painting with them.

The painting on the left is my first serious attempt with them and since I was concentrating more on how to use the paint than anything else, I hope you won't judge the effort too harshly.

So, what do I think of these paints?

I like them as they have a lot of positive points but they're also sort of "clumsy" to use.  These are not oils in the traditional sense but they do have a synthetic oil in their composition so are allowed to be called "oil paints".  There has been much debate on that point with traditional oil painters not wanting them to be classified as oil paints.

The fact is that the heat set paints are in a class by themselves.  As the name implies, they don't dry until they're subjected to a temperature of about 265 degrees F for several minutes depending on the thickness of the paint layer.  This can be accomplished in a home oven or with a hot air gun such as is used for stripping paint.

This fact is both a pro and a con for the paints.  It's wonderful to have a painting stay wet until you want it dry but because of the limitations of both a home oven and a heat gun, you can only paint certain sizes and on certain supports.  Imagine trying to heat a piece of paper to 265 degrees for 15 minutes or so without it going up in flames or at least getting seriously charred!  Even canvas boards - the kind with canvas glued onto a cardboard backing - aren't suitable as the glue used for these won't hold up in the heat and will cause the canvas to become loose.

Of course there are ways to dry a large painting but it can get costly (think of those large conveyor belt t-shirt dryers).  They do work on the most common painting supports such as stretched canvas and gessoed hardboard which is nice.  The caveat is that these supports have to be gessoed with an acrylic gesso and not a support prepared for traditional oil painting.

Since the paints never dry by themselves, you don't have to clean your brushes or do anything special to preserve your palette from one painting session to the next.  However, you do need to use either a glass, metal, or tile palette as these paints do not react well with plastic.  It's also advised that you cover your palette and brushes to keep dust from settling onto the wet paint.  Again, don't use any kind of plastic wrap for this.  I've been inverting a cardboard box over my palette and it's working just fine.

I'll try to post more about the pros and cons of these paints at a later time.  If anyone has any questions, just let me know!

One For Fun

Kurious Koi

Believe it or not, I'm still working in acrylics and just took this off the easel today.  Of course, like all my paintings, I'm putting it aside to "marinate" and see if anything else needs to be done with it.

This is painted on an all wet-media canvas sheet that I affixed to a prepared piece of hardboard with acrylic medium.  It's a painting surface that I really, really like and may be the reason I'm still using acrylic paints.  For some reason, they tend to go on smoother and handle better on this surface.

I'll try gouache with it next and see how that does and how it works with it.  I have a feeling it will do well but we'll see. 

Still have several paintings either in the works or in my head but have to admit, I'm finally running out of steam!  lol

You'll just have to watch this blog to see what else, if anything, I come up with!

Another Double Exposure

"Our Mother's Legacy" -  acrylic

A couple of years ago, I participated in a joint collaboration with our local camera club and area artists for what they called a Double Exposure Exhibit.  The artists selected photos from the camera club and painted their version of the photo they chose.  Then both the photos and the paintings were exhibited in the camera club gallery.

This time I'm not painting from the camera club photos but one from my professional photographer sister and we'll both show the results at an art show in her home town in Colorado in July.

We chose this photo because it has meaning for both of us.  Our mother was an avid gardener and had a green thumb that wouldn't quit!  After she died, my sister tried to rescue as many of her flowers as possible as my dad is sort of the type to mow the lawn in a straight line whether there are plants in the way or not!  (I do have to say that he's done a really good job of taking care of her remaining flowers though). 

This beautiful clematis bloom is the result of the rescue of a start from Mom's original plant.  The photo of the bloom is lovely with its glowing back-lit petals and it was a challenge to capture that glow. 

You may not be able to tell, but this is painted on hardboard with another, smaller board glued on top.  After everything was completely dry, the whole board was prepped with a primer and several coats of gesso. 

The painting is acrylic (yeah, yeah, I know, not usually my medium of choice!) and is titled "Our Mother's Legacy".

Art Accessories

I know I said I'm painting and I really am but I'm a slow painter and other things have interrupted my actual painting time. 

One thing was the search for 6 inch square picture frames - not to be found locally and really not too many to choose from online.  But, I really like working with wood and decided to make my own frames for these small paintings. 

I've done pretty well with just a miter box and hand tools in the past but I ended up messing up one frame section this time.  My husband couldn't resist harrassing me about it and decided that he'd cut the frame sections.  Well, that meant 4 sections messed up and a trip to our local home improvement store where he bought an inexpensive compound miter saw, something I've wanted for ages.  He also bought this nifty picture frame jig that really works!

As you can see, the miters are about as perfect as they can be but the set-up to cut them took a while to accomplish.  First the saw had to be assembled and checked to make sure the angles were true.  That all took an hour or so.

Then we made a simple jig to cut the frame sections to the exact same length and then mitered each end.  I have to say that saw is really sweet but probably wouldn't be much better than the hand saw if we hadn't made the cutting jig.

So you can see one of those things "cutting" (pun intended!) into my painting time but I really think it will be worth it in the long run.  With just these four frames, we've already "paid" for nearly half the cost of the saw and I have at least 3 other paintings in the works that are not standard sizes so custom frames will have to be made for them also.  These are relatively large frames so the saw will definitely be paid for with them with room to spare!

And I'm also working on the tile coasters doing a little experimenting trying to find a more cost effective way to produce them so I can sell them reasonably. 

And I'm working on producing some notecards for the show in July. 

And, I really am painting!

Bison - Gouache Painting

Bison - varnished gouache

I'm still painting away but everything seems to take forever to do!  I'm still working on a collaborative effort between my photographer sister and myself but hope to finish it soon.  My sister took the photo and I'm painting it (in acrylic!  any wonder I'm so slow with it?)  and we hope to show both the photo and the painting at a show in her town in Colorado this coming July.  More about all that later.

In the meantime, I've painted a buffalo or bison for the first time and have to say it surprised me at how it came out.  Another painting that I actually like - maybe I'm finally on a roll!  This has been painted in gouache on a canvas panel.  I gave the panel a couple of extra coats of gesso primer and the texture was really good for painting.  After I finished the painting, I varnished it as usual so it wouldn't have to be framed under glass.  Varnishing a water media painting is a little controversial but is becoming more and more common every day.  The varnish gives life to the colors plus protects the painting from smearing and pollutants in the air.  Since I use several coats of a UV resistant varnish, it also helps protect from UV rays. 

And I have a couple of other paintings sketched out and waiting for their turn on the easel.  I won't say any more than that except it might be a few days before I get to them.

I'm also back to experimenting with the coasters (see THIS blog post) but will write more about that in a future blog post. 

It just seems as if I'm in a creative frenzy these days and don't have enough time and energy to get it all painted, crafted or cleaned!

Definite Final

I took Sue's (Pencilpix blog) advice and added some distant "somethings" to the right side of the horizon line.  I figure it's a stand of trees or maybe a jumble of rock - I'm not sure what it is but I do think it helps the painting.

I hope so as I varnished it and we went to Michael's and Hobby Lobby today to look for frames.

We bought two frames, one at each store, and we both like both of them equally!  I joked and said that since the painting is varnished and not behind glass, we could easily exchange frames every 6 months so both of them could be used!

Not only did we find frames we liked, but both were on sale.  Of course, both stores regularly have "sales" on their frames but Michael's sale was 60% off, plus, our son had given me a gift card for there so the one frame only cost me a dollar and 12 cents.  Can't beat that!

I was also looking for some small (6") square frames but they didn't have any.  Or at least Michael's didn't have any - I forgot to look at Hobby Lobby!  Oh, well, guess that means another road trip!

In the meantime, I need a title for this and for the other cowboy (pastel on black shown below).  While the other cowboy won't be framed, I did enough to it to get a decent scan so I can offer prints at FAA.  I'll offer prints of both of these as soon as I can title them.

One of my BIL's suggested Campfire Thoughts for the cowboy on black and I've gotten quite a few suggestions for naming this painting but none really click.  Any ideas out there?

One of THOSE Days!

Here it is about 3:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas!  Seriously, this is ridiculous, I know, but I usually get up before my DH and this morning I went right to work in the studio trying to rework the dark cowboy and give some interest to the light one!  lol

I'm just now realizing what time it is and crawling out of my den (er, studio) - good thing I have clean pj's for tonight.  I think I'll just stay as I am at this point and take a shower and put on my clean jammies right before bed!  Thank God we don't get many unannounced visitors!

I think I made some progress on the "almost" portrait of my husband but I really spent the most time on the dark cowboy that I posted yesterday.  I really worked on it but I think I'll just repaint it - I re-worked it then sprayed it again and this time the spray (SpectraFix) spattered and left those little splotches on the painting even though I saturated it well.

It also darkened the painting again after I'd worked so hard to lighten it and give it a bit more life.  I think I'm going to concentrate on painting with gouache and just play with pastel as pastel is just one of those mediums that really doesn't do well if you don't get it right the first time around.  It's pretty easy to overwork and muddy up colors whereas gouache can be overworked and muddied BUT you can usually wipe off an area and completely repaint if need be.

In the painting of my DH, for instance, I was following some advice from my friend, Sue, from the PencilPix blog and trying different things in the empty space to the right of of the figure of my husband.  I finally settled on some far away trees and painted them in only to discover the color I used wasn't exactly right. Since I was painting over an area of the sky, the under color was mixing into the new color and I actually got some mud.  It was a relatively easy fix to just wipe out what I didn't want (I used a damp cotton swab/cotton bud) and start again.  I'm not posting any new photo of it just yet as I'm waiting to see if it actually does help the painting.  I also tweaked some of the values on the jacket a bit and I just want to let the painting sit to see if it needs anything else.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous day here and I haven't been any further than the back porch when our dog wanted out!  It's supposed to rain for the next day or two so I guess I blew the opportunity to get some sun for a while!

Hope you all are enjoying the spring and that it's beautiful where you are too.