Snoqualmie River at Fall City
acrylic on board, 12" x 12"
I dusted off my collection of oil paints from the 1970's, and spent a considerable amount of time prying lids off the tubes and cleaning up the threads and caps. Most of the tubes were not salvageable, especially the ones where the lids had popped off over time, but a few were still pliable after all these years. I'm baffled as to how the lids had come off, as they would have to be unscrewed. I have some suspicions of sabotage.
My first mistake was to set up inside to work from a digital photo taken at the river on the old IBM computer. After applying a thin wash over the board, the fumes from the "odorless" mineral spirits and lavender spike oil drove everyone out of the house.
After moving all my supplies outside to the covered porch, I returned to open windows and set up a box fan to clear out the fumes. Oops.
I continued working on it outside by using a small printout of the photo for reference.
Mistake Number 2: I picked up a couple more tubes of paint from a local inexpensive craft store. The low end paint had very little pigment, and excess oil, making it very difficult to mix successfully with the older but better quality paint.
The oils have more resonance - for lack of a better term. The seem richer and deeper in color than the acrylics. If the solvents weren't so overwhelming, I would switch to using this medium in a heartbeat. But for now, I will have to limit them to outside only. Or try using them without any thinners.
