‘Peaceful Mountain River - The Oil and Oval Edition!’
Oils on Canvas - 16″ x 20″

Much as I’d love to have written about my first, it’s destruction was mentioned in the last post! After the loss of my first painting immediately after painting it and before I had a picture (I was going to take one when it was in it’s drying location), I wasn’t going to worry about painting anymore tonight. However, lying on the couch watching TV, it began to nag at me that I had promised myself that I’d have an oil painting to show at the end of the weekend and I still didn’t have one! So I got set up again and was going to repaint the original but decided I didn’t want to do that again since I had spent plenty of time earlier doing it. Instead, I decided to revisit my current favorite view: the peaceful mountain river. I thought it would be a good exercise to see how well I could do in oils what I had already done in acrylics. I am very pleased with the results.

The definitely prefer the colors in this painting over either of my acrylic versions. I also prefer the way I handled the sky and clouds. The decision to go with a simple grassy plain instead of a bunch of shrubbery also makes it more peaceful, in my opinion. The only thing I don’t like is my shadowing on the mountains. I got so caught up in trying to replicate technique that i forgot to pay attention to my light source and screwed it up. I don’t know how many people would have noticed if I hadn’t said anything though.

I also really enjoyed painting on the oval canvas. It was fun to paint on a non-rectangle canvas, and I’m thinking that I will happily use them more often if this one garners any interest. If nothing else, It should make for a nice contrast on my walls to all of the squared-off canvases!

Next up - a return to acrylics for a few mini-canvases (5″ x 7″) to try and provide some lower price-point original paintings. Sometime this week I’ll return to oils and next time, I think I may avoid mountains all together!