Oil and Cold Wax Class

Goodness, it's been way too long since I've posted!!  I was just in the most wonderful oil and cold wax class this weekend with all the same artists I learned it with initially last year.  We all had such a great time this time! Much more relaxed and less frenzied since we all knew what to expect and have been creating oil and cold wax over the past year.

Here are my 12 completed pieces.  The first four are 8"x8", the second four are 10"x10" and the last four are 12"x12".  Once they have dried, I will buff them out with a clear coat of wax, photograph them and put them for sale on my website.  It was great fun, and I worked all the pieces in a complimentary palette.  I've been working on a 100 artworks challenge for the past few months in watercolor using the three complimentary palettes of red/green, yellow/purple and orange/blue, so that whole idea just spilled over into my oil and cold wax pieces this weekend.  I plan to keep working more oil and cold wax as it's just a different and fun medium to work in.  These are all done on wood panels with 2" deep sides painted black.  They are ready to hang without any hardware.  There is LOTS of texture in each piece, which you may not be able to really see in the photos - but it's there. ;-)

It's quite the messy process!  Here's my work area at the end of two days of class:

I have some beautiful "mono-prints" on newsprint from the subtractive process of the oil and cold wax.  I plan to mount the best ones on card stock, coat with resin and add matting to sell these pieces too.  They will be on either my website or etsy when I finish them.

Back in the Studio

It's been awhile since I've had time to get into my home art studio and paint. Here's one of my two work tables and my palette scraped clean. It looks like a nice, colorful abstract in this photo.  I like to scape all the leftover colors off the palette and mix them together at the end of a painting session. It gives me some great grays for next time. I just put in a container and pop it in the freezer. 

Tonight I salvaged three 8"x8" canvas panels that I did a long time ago and just didn't like. I couldn't tell if I'd done acrylic or oil on them originally so the rework had to be in oils. I used a color palette of greens, yellows and purple and used the palette knife and impasto Liquin. I like to tape smaller canvases to a large piece of foam core so I can work either on the easel or hold the foam core in my hand to work more up close with the painting without having to hold the canvas and get paint everywhere.  Here are the three re-worked pieces - they're all abstracted nature scenes from my imagination.

While I've not painted a lot in my studio the past couple of months, I've been faithfully painting outdoors with my two plein air groups every week.  I tweaked a couple of plein air paintings tonight as well since I had lots of lovely greens and yellows left over from the re-worked paintings above.  I have more tweaking to do on a number of them.  So I laid all 12 of them out on my other table to study them and see which ones need more work.  I didn't realize how many I'd already done so far!

My studio looks really messy, but it's controlled chaos. I could have a studio twice this size and I'd somehow fill it up and still be wishing for more room.  ;-p

I've been reading several books and tons of blogs the past month to put together a business plan for my art biz which is why I haven't been in the studio.  I'm planning to make 2014 the year I turn a profit in my art biz.  This year, all my goals will be in writing with a complete plan to get there and all mapped out on a calendar. I'll be learning to use oils and cold wax medium next month for a whole new twist in abstract painting and will be working up 20 small canvases for a show at the Ft. Pierce library in June. I also plan to enter lots of shows this coming year and get my work "out there."  Do you have any ideas for where I can put my art locally this year for greater exposure and hopefully, sales? I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions!