Making A Living and Fixing Mistakes

I dunno how I could lose 6 weeks to raising a puppy and taking care of family and making a living without turning out a new canvas. I have managed to paint the edges on all my canvases that were literally hanging around so that they can be hung without a frame, which is my minimalist preference, so at least I got to practice mixing. I also finally learned that I absolutely MUST wear my nifty "painting shirt" or I WILL get paint on my good shirts and possibly my jeans as well, no matter how careful I think I am! I honestly don't think it's a lack of motor skills on my part, but more the confined area in which I work. I place most of the blame on my brush caddy, which mounts precariously onto my small box easel. It wants to position my long handled brushes across the air space in front of my small canvases, because the work space is so narrow that the brush handles hit the side of a bookcase. Many of the brushes I favor for their quality and paint handling are long handled oil brushes, made for standing back from the canvas, not so much for sitting closer to a small sized study. I sometimes leave color on them when I am working different colors or textures at one time. (Note that the photo of my shirt includes three of my favorite makes and models of brushes mentioned in my previous posts on bushes below.) I didn't have so much trouble with wayward paint when I had a bigger studio, though I'm honestly quite grateful for the space I do have now.

Thus recently I have gone back to practicing my old trick of taking the stained "good" shirt and touching up the stain with even more paint (after cleaning it up as much as possible with turps and laundering it), in effect practicing my skills by painting out the marks of my carelessness. I did that years ago in my youth in college when finances dictated that I wear my clothes completely out, and then later on when I was doing my own paintings and commissioned portraits in acrylics, and didn't really think anything about it. A few months ago I came across a thread on Wet Canvas! on the actual subject of painting out accidents on one's clothing, so it seems fairly common.

My own advice if you are using oils (as I am currently), is to mix the exact color with just a tiny touch of a quick flash point thinner if necessary for discreet handling (oil of spike is good, or English turps), and to put your dabs of perfectly matched mixed paint on a paper towel or paper plate first to take out as much oil as possible. This is because the carrier oil in your pigments can spread the paint beyond where you want it through the fabric's absorption, and may leave a yellow halo around the colored area. Then do the touch up with a fine pointed brush or toothpick or q-tip, whatever gives you the most control. Keep the paint rich but the application thin, you don't want blobs. Let it dry in a safe place, then wash. If you are using acrylics, remember that they dry DARKER! So compensate by mixing a bit lighter color, and mix under good bright light if possible. This is actually an extremely good practice in training your eye to mix color accurately, so consider it time well spent in studying your craft and improving your skills. BUT, it's better to keep paint off of your person wherever possible, especially your skin, as many pigments and thinners and mediums contain toxic elements, and you do NOT want that stuff on your skin, where it can be absorbed into your system.

Just Paint!

My better half says "JUST PAINT". It seems so easy, just squeeze some paint onto a palette, grab some brushes (and maybe some medium), throw a canvas up on the easel and start spreading that stuff around! BUT. If a painter doesn't have an understanding of the materials, the results can be something like a backyard mechanic pulling the pieces off an engine without knowing how they go back together. There are basic mechanics involved in any art form, and the more the artist understands the materials, the sounder the process in general. For painters, specifically OIL painters, it's necessary to know a number of rules relating to the support (what the painting is painted on; wood, canvas, hardboard) and how it's prepped (sealer or sizing, oil or acrylic ground, how many layers, what kind if any texture); whether to use an underpainting and how complex it should be if so; how much and what type of medium to add and it's composition; which paints are transparent, which are opaque, which dry faster, which are very slow; what kind of brush to use for a particular paint application, how thick or thin the paint goes on, what kind of brushstroke.. you get the idea? Now let's go deeper, into all the different pigments and types and their characteristics, how they blend and interact, which are archival and which are suspect, and who makes the best paint, which is always good for a rousing discussion!
It's like the world of coffee home roasters, where type of bean, specific varietal, where it's grown, how it's processed, how it cupped, ect. is just the beginning before we roast. Then we have degree of roast (first crack, second crack, and how long into it), what type of roaster, how to ramp up and control the roast cycle, etc. to consider. I have enough experience to roast by the seat of my pants, and it's always good if I keep a careful eye on it. (As in never walk away from a roast in progress, lest you hear the dreaded third crack, which is the glass of the roasting chamber!) But we don't want to go there, I can bore anyone who isn't also a home roaster to beyond tears, and have.
I paint by the seat of my pants now and then too; some paintings beg for bravura brushwork and experimentation, but it's better to have that basic experience and knowledge from which to pull when doing so, or one can end up scraping off lots of wet paint! (Though sometimes that can make for a lovely resurrection of the work).
So good painting requires study and knowledge of a tremendous number of art related areas. One method of direct study is to do paint tests and comparisons, one of which I have posted here to share some of the behind the scenes process. It may look like I'm not painting when there are no new canvases up, but it often means I'm busy doing some homework!
This was a study and comparison of Vasari, Michael Harding, Puro (and a 30 year old tube of Brera, by Maimeri, who makes the Puro) with some 25 year old Grumbacher Pretested earths I have. The top of the color swatch is straight from the tube, the middle is thinned with turps to check pigment load and luminosity, the bottom is mixed with my standard medium. (I am also doing a drying test with this panel). They all have their own strengths, and this panel is now part of my reference tools for what colors I want to favor, and for how I want to use them.