Here's a nearly finished painting that I'm working on. 

work in progress

oil on canvas

24" x 24"

I'm painting again.  I like it.

As for the "what is this blog for" question previously posted about, I think for now it's just a way for me to record what I'm doing and gain some confidence.  It's very hard to push your work, but it's also very easy to become complacent and afraid if you don't.  I'm still working on the fear phase.

Painting Progress

It's not finished yet, but here's the start of the painting I've been working on.  I still need to work out a few problems and continue to build up layers.  We'll see where it goes.

2010 oil painting

Finally got a few hours to drag my 3'x5' underpainted canvas outside for a lovely afternoon of painting in the sunshine.  Very much looking forward to playing around with this one.  Hopefully I'll have the courage to get some process pictures up as I go without hindering creativity with self consciousness.

View out my window

Pretty self explanitory!  I was playing around with ink because oil is not an option at this moment, and I found myself trying to solve the problem of a limited and unusual palate because of the inks I had.  It was nice to work fluidly on shorter painting with a lot of open space.  I still got to do some of the building up that I love as well as using scribbling, agitated marks in conjunction with softer, flowing motions.

Obviously some were more successful than others, and working in a series allowed me to explore and solve some of the problems, such as balancing emptiness with positive space.

Complete landscape series, as of Feb 8, 2010

landscape, ink on paper, 2010

Turpentine in the winter...

Okay, so I very quickly realized, after starting my underpainting a few weeks ago, that I'm going to kill myself with fumes because i don't have ventilation.  It's winter and very cold outside, so open windows are just not going to happen.  I'm trying to figure out how to get painting, as I'm really itching to work, but in the meantime i've been playing around with some little tree/landscape paintings in ink.  Perhaps not incredibly original, but they are fun to do and keep me doing art even when I'm super busy with my two jobs.

On that note, I meant to run off to the east coast to pursue art, and ended up working for THE MAN 60 hours a week.  Whoops.

New Painting

Have a big ol' canvas stretched and gessoed and ready to go.  Got me a vat of turpentine and linseed oil, which I actually had to procure from my hardware store as the local art supply shop is a wee overpriced without the student discount and mostly carries terpenoid anyway.  I know it's full of terrible fumes, but in some ways, I'm a purist.  Besides, you can't really make a good medium without the real stuff.

Very eager to get going.