First Attempt at Oil

This is the dark layer in my first attempt at oil painting. Well to be honest it isn't my very first attempt. One weekend a month or so ago I bought some cheap oil paints two brushes and two canvases. After doing my pastels I thought oil's would be just like them only in a tube. That was a stupid mistake. I looked like a smurf afterwards and made a complete mess. The paint never dried and it was a very frustrating event. Afterwards I asked Donna Shortt what I was doing wrong and apparently everything.
Oil paints have to be mixed with alcohol or another medium to thin them out. This helps it dry. So to begin with I mixed an orange color and mineral spirits to make a warm wash. When that dried a dark purple mixed in with linseed oil for the dark layer was added. This layer still looks very wet as I write this so hopefully I mixed it right. Once this dries I will move on to lighter layers. I know it looks like I can't paint straight lines right now(which I can't) but I will use the sky to form the outline of the shapes so all that fuzziness will go away when I'm on that layer.
Anyway this is exciting and messy (sounds awesome).

Looming Clouds

If you notice that my paintings contain a lot of power lines, cars, and fields you would have a good idea of what I see on a regular basis. Those three things are everywhere around me and I want to be able to portray them correctly. Each time I paint them they seem to get easier to represent. Whether they look better or not is another story. One of the things I'm working on is to go with my instinct and to be decisive in my paintings. For a while I was having a hard time deciding if what I was doing was going to look good, and more likely than not it doesn't matter because my technical skills are lacking.
I'm happy with how the horizon turned out on this painting. It seems to really be pushed back there. Everything up to the red barn looks like it falls in place. The grass along the road as it leads up to the foreground could have gotten larger, been represented better and the field a warmer yellow. One mistake I seem to make more than I should is under estimating how much paint is needed to fill in a shape. The road is a perfect example. The center of the road between the two yellow lines is darker than the left and right sides. I started with a color already mixed and ran out after I got up to the next hill in the road. When I started to mix the color for the left and right, the color in the middle had already began to dry. When watercolor dries the color lightens up. That is why you have to make colors darker than you think you need. When I laid down the sides of the road they were the same color as the center but seeing as the center was already drying the sides turned out even lighter.
Anyway it was a good learning experience. It will turn out better in pastels.

More Power Lines

Today I found a mop brush that I must have gotten when I first started painting and forgot about it. It was stashed away with some of the other art stuff that I never unpacked. What better way to follow my guidelines than to use something I didn't know I had.
The sky was done using the mop. It holds so much water. It should have been out being used before today. When I got to the bushes and power lines I used an old number 8 round that has no point. I flattened the end out and tried to use it that way. While there are parts that could be improved, overall I like the painting. It will be a good guide for its pastel counterpart.

The direction I want to go

After my painting today and thinking about where I would like to go with all of this, I've decided to set some parameters for myself.
For 30 days I will paint according to a set of guidelines that I have set for myself. At the 15 day mark I will review the previous days and decide to continue or slightly alter my guidelines for the rest of the timeline. At the end of the 30 days I will write a synopsis on the process as well as the paintings. Occasionally I will post extended views of 120 to 180 days.
My current guidelines are for the next 30 days I will be painting 15 photographs twice. These photos will be altered when I do value studies and color plans. The first 15 paintings will be watercolors and the last 15 will be in pastel. The watercolors will be done with materials that I am not familiar or comfortable with. The pastels will be done with techniques that I struggle with and only in hard pastels.
By the end of this time line if I like 1/3 of the paintings I will consider that a huge success. Within six months the plan is to have the numbers down to 1/2 to 1/2.5 paintings that I like.
The painting above is from back home. This is about 2 miles from my parents house. My dad farms the field I was standing in and the one I was looking at. With time I will paint all the farm ground and equipment.

Ride Home

Lately I have been trying to use any of my brushes besides my only sable brush which is a 10 round. This is the latest experiment in that endeavour. This painting was done with 3/4" synthetic angle brush that doesn't hold water very well. I like this painting  better than the one done yesterday. This one isn't as sloppy but only in the context of yesterday's painting. It is a 9x12 on 90lb paper. After painting this I need to write down my ideas on where I want to go with the blog.