Tag: art materials squee

paintings · portraits

Eyeliner – an oil sketch

J R DunsterLeave a comment

This time, I’ve got a little 4×4 inch oil sketch. Not much to say about this, other than it was fun to paint and has a little looser style for me. I studied some fashion illustration in art school, so I sometimes enjoy painting glamour or fashion faces. I hope I can paint more with this loose style in the future.


“Eyeliner” 4×4 inches, oil on panel. 

The fun thing about this painting is that I used a little wood panel that I’d primed with a lead-based oil foundation. For those of you who are not painters, this means absolutely nothing, so you can stop reading now. 😉

I sealed the panel with this acrylic glue-like stuff (Golden Brand “GAC 100” acrylic medium). Then I covered the panel with a few coats of M. Harding’s “Foundation White,” a lead-based white paint that can be used for priming canvases and panels. I liked the surface for painting and will be using more of this stuff. And don’t worry, I was careful with the evil lead paint. I didn’t eat any of it or anything!

paintings · portraits

“Suspicion” portrait study in oil

J R Dunster2 Comments

Another in my series of paintings exploring human expression and emotion, inspired by those melodramatic Spanish-language soap operas. (So much crying and angst! So over-the-top! So campy! I love this stuff!) Other paintings in this series are “Sad Tears,”  “Sideway Glance, and Roger.”

I started working on this series because I needed the practice (an interesting excuse to paint little portrait studies) and I thought the challenge of trying to capture the expressions was a needed exercise. Plus I love those Spanish soaps! I started watching them years ago (off and on) and they really have helped with my Spanish comprehension.

“Suspicion” oil on oil-primed linen, 8×8 inches.

I used SourceTek‘s fantastic oil-primed linen. Oh my word, I can’t say enough about SourceTek. When I put the first brushstrokes down on an oil-primed SourceTek panel, I stopped and went, “Whoa!” Kind of like if I’d eaten an especially luscious piece of chocolate. It was that sublime. You just had to be there. The way it took the paint, the texture . . . *sigh* Seriously, I’m in love with these panels. I’ve also got a nice little order of oil-primed linen from RayMar, and I anticipate a similar reaction.

I use good quality paints of various brands. Some of them standard quality “artist grade” (like Winsor & Newton’s Artist Oils and Grumbacher’s Pre-Tested) but I also have some heady, high-end super-duper fancy oil paints. Like Vasari. Sigh and say it with me . . . Vasari.

Vasari is super rich, super smooth, and super-expensive. I had Yellow Ochre (a cheaper pigment) on my palette when I worked on this painting. Other colors (from less expensive brands) were Alizarin Crimson (Permanent variety), Cadmium Red Light, Ultramarine Blue, Prussian Blue, Red Iron Oxide, Naples Yellow, Burnt Carmine (Rembrandt brand—I LOVE this color!), and a Titanium-Zinc White.

Some day I’ll devote a whole blog post to some of my favorite paint brands, as well as more about the colors I like best. But not in this post.

This painting was started several months ago, was shelved as I got sidetracked with other things, and then I returned to it. There was some fussing and fiddling that went into it (getting the proportions of the head correct took a little longer than it should have) but finally I think it’s done. I feel like the painting style here harks back a little bit too much to my illustration roots (I studied illustration in art school) but that’s okay. I’m simply glad to have it done. Onto the next painting!