Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Cold Wax and Oil Workshop

This past weekend I attended a work shop in Minneapolis with James Edward Scherbarth. The workshop taught the participants how to use cold wax and oil and develop layered paintings-paintings that have depth and character that single layer paintings cannot hope to achieve.

 Jim is a great teacher and shared so much of his knowledge with the artists in the workshop. And the artists in the workshop shared their ideas too. We all came up with totally individual paintings. We used Jim's instructions and then created paintings that came from ourselves.  The following is one of my paintings from the weekend.  11 x 14 on a wood panel. I will have the good final paintings mounted on 1x1 supports to give the painting a good presentation. I am glad that I just started with the flat panel instead of the expense of pre-made panels. Cause I know that some of these are totally going to be painted over.


I worked on five panels over the course of three days and know that I will have many more days of work in on the paintings. They are all works in progress. I find that one of my errors is that my paintings do not have the contrast in values that make a painting interesting and eye catching.

This is the painting above in black and white showing how the values are very close together and have little contrast.


This image shows enhanced contrast in values.  I definitely need to get to this level of contrast.


Onward in my quest for a good abstract using cold wax as a medium for my oils.




Continuing Work in Progress



This is a photo of where the Ss. Peter and Paul commission is heading. I have printed out the psalm and kind of placed it on the painting where I think it will go. The original idea was to letter St. Ceceila choir in this space. We decided that was not right since there are more than one choir at SSPP and we want to honor all of the choirs. I will still use the elaborate capital at the beginning of the psalm. I want to use some of the techniques I learned this weekend at a cold wax and oil work shop with James Edward Scherbarth in the back ground and in the angels dresses. The lettering will be in various shades of the back ground colors.  And the final touch ( I hope) will be some touches of gold leaf.  Onward................