My oil painting technique... A few Q's & A's

From time to time I will get questions from fellow artists about my approach to oil painting, so I thought I'd share some recent ones here on the blog, in case there are others who might have the same concerns: Q: How do you keep your colors clean painting in oil? Do you clean the brushes stroke after stroke? Do you wait for one coat to dry before applying a thicker one?    A: The best way to do this is to lay a stroke down and leave it be. I like to mix my paint on the palette with a palette knife in the studio, rather than mixing it around with my brush. When I paint en plein air, this isn't always the case, but starting out in oils I recommend it for keeping colors clean. Also, yes, clean your brushes often and wipe with paper towels. You need to have enough paint on the tip of your brush. Most beginners in oils don't do this and lay down a thin stroke, then see they didn't get the right effect and so try to paint over and over it a few times, giving a smeared, muddy effect. If you need to test the paint mixture to judge color notes or values, just dab a bit of paint on the canvas with your palette knive to test before laying on a bunch of paint.

You can paint either using a direct method or an indirect method. I paint using a direct method, where I am laying paint rather thickly on canvas, sometimes doing it all "alla prima" (at one go) for smaller canvases, or in consecutive sessions for larger canvases.  You can use a painting medium like Galkyd or Liquin, which speeds the drying and increases fluidity. There are also impasto mediums that help the paint sit up thickly and "stay put". But if you use these, use them sparingly or else it compromises the stability of the paint.

I saw Ken Backhaus and John Budicin demoing in oils recently and neither of them used any medium at all. They just laid the paint on pretty thickly and left it be.  It does take some practice to do this, though, and some confidence in handling your brushwork.   Indirect painting is approached differently, using glazes that build up through layering. With this method you WOULD let the painting dry to the touch in between sessions, painting thinly and gradually building up the paint layer. The rule here is to pain "fat over lean", meaning paint thick over thin, oily over less oily. Lots of portrait painters use this indirect method, which gives a beautiful luminous quality to  translucent passages such as skin.

Q: How do you keep your deep dark values clear cut separate from your light? That goes for structures as for skin tones. 

My dark passages and shadow areas are generally painted a bit thinner than highlighted areas. I leave the impasto (thick, raised paint) for highlights, which are naturally going to be more opaque because of the addition of white paint used in the mixtures.

The best way to keep your darks clean is to not move your paint around so much on your canvas once it's down. Think in terms of laying the paint down rather than smearing it around. Also, to keep darks dark, you can lay them in first and then lay in impasto highlights after. If you do it the other way around the light, which usually includes white will muddy and lighten the dark . If you do need to darken something, wait until the paint "sets up" a bit and becomes at least tacky to the touch before going back in with dark over light. If you've worked in watercolor before, this will be the exact opposite approach to watercolor!

Mixing Greens

I live in Virginia, and one of the most beautiful things about this area in the milder months is the vast arrays of greens.  As a landscape painter this is also one of the most challenging aspects about painting in this area! In my opinion it is a good idea to try and mix your own greens as much as possible. It is easy to spot a painting that uses a lot of out-of-the-tube greens. It's not that tube greens are bad (and I definitely carry at least one when I paint en plein air because of the need for speed.) But painters can become over-reliant on them to the point where the same green is used for everything (trees, grass, shrubs, etc.) and the painting lacks nuance or variation.

The possibilities for mixing greens are seemingly endless. Here are some of the combinations (for oil painting) that I use often:

• Warm blue (like pthalo)+ cool yellow (lemon) gives you a strong, kelly green
• Cool blue (ultramarine) + warm yellow (cad. yellow) yields a duller, muted green
• Cobalt blue is a true blue, and will yield a little cleaner green than ultramarine because ultramarine blue has red in it.
• Experiment mixing warms and cools and you'll get greens that fall in the middle of these two extremes!
• A good replacement for Sap Green: try mixing Prussian Blue or Pthalo Blue with Indian yellow. This will give you a similar dark, transparent green.
• Lightening your greens can get a little tricky. Add too much white and your greens appear chalky. White also cools your colors considerably. Add too much yellow and your greens get brighter and warmer, which may not be what you're going for. The key is balance and a lot of experimentation (a.k.a trial and error!)
• For distant greens, like at the horizon line of a distant field, try mixing white with a touch of blue and orange, and blending that into your greens as the field recedes.
• Alternately, you could gray your greens down ever so slightly with a touch of a complimentary color like Alizarin crimson plus white.

Mixing greens is definitely a practiced skill, so my best advice if you are a landscape painter is to practice! It helps to create your own color charts with all of the various combinations of greens that you can mix, labled with the paints used to achieve each mixture. Within this chart, also try and mix a value scale, to see what the green mixture would look like lighter or darker.

Here's an idea if you want even more of a challenge: Try limiting your palette to Permanent Alizarin, Ultramarine or Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow Light, and Titanium White, and see if you can execute the whole painting with just those colors. When you've practiced this for a while, add Phtalo or Windsor green to your palette. This is what Kevin Macpherson suggests in his excellent book Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color.

Do you have a favorite green color mixture for your landscape paintings? Share your ideas by leaving a comment!

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist Virginia landscape paintings plein air 

Check out my Squidoo Lens

A few weeks ago I was e-chatting with plein air painter Jan Blencowe and she mentioned that she was becoming addicted to Squidoo lenses. Addicted to huh? Never heard of it. Then after that conversation I seemed to hear about these lenses every other day. Must be a sign!  What is a lens? According to Squidoo,

"A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and thousands of products from hundreds of other trusted merchants. You can pick whatever content you want to put in your lens to bring context to your topic. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. It's a place to start, not finish."

So I decided to investigate further and play. My first Squidoo lens about landscape painting is now online.  I am still thinking about more things I can include in the lens, but it is essentially up and running. Check out my Squidoo Lense here! 

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air  

Toning a canvas

I've mentioned in previous posts that I sometimes work with toned canvas. I especially like a toned canvas when painting en plein air, as the bright light of the sun can make a bright white canvas hard on the eyes. I've worked with both a neutral gray toned panel and a tan toned panel. Since I am more attracted to warm colors, the golden tan tone appeals to me a little more. From what I've read the Impressionist Claude Monet also liked working with what he called a "blonde" canvas.  It gives a nice under layer to both skies and ground alike.

I like to tone my canvas in advance so that the toning doesn't muddy up my paint layers when I start painting. To do this I will use a raw sienna oil paint and apply it very thinly to the canvas by "scrubbing" it in with an old brush. With this method, a little goes a long way, because I want to keep the raw sienna transparent. I don't apply it in an opaque layer as that would make the canvas too dark and the canvas would likely not dry to the touch overnight. 

Alternately if I am too impatient to do the scrub in method, I will do a wash of raw sienna thinned with solvent.  You can really play around with the wash and add a dab of white to the mix if you find the raw sienna to be too dark. It is really personal preference. The point is to keep it thin so that it can dry overnight and be ready for painting the next day.

I've also painted on canvas toned on the spot when I haven't had the foresight to tone them the night before. But again, it can muddy your colors unless you apply the paint strokes a little more thickly and leave them be once you've laid them down.

Plein air tip: If you've done any plein air painting you will probably have noticed that you have to clean your palette more often so that you have space to mix your paint. As a result, you can have scrapings that turn to mud due to all of your color mixtures combined with white. Before you wipe off that ugly mud, think twice! Save your mud in a mud pile on the side of your palette and you can use it to tone your canvases later. 

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air 

Leaving for Lake Como Today

Today is the day! We will be heading out shortly for a most beautiful Italian destination. I plan to do some painting while I am there, but since we are going to be going to a lot of different little lake towns, I've decided to carry a minimum supply of art materials. I'd love to bring oils when I can stay for a longer period, but this trip I will bring my travel watercolor set, similar to the one shown here, (except mine has alot more pull-out palette space). In addition to the pan colors, I'm bringing a small selection of Windsor & Newton professional grade artists' colors in tubes.

Other supplies:

• cotton rag
• small selection of brushes
• watercolor journal
• watercolor papers
• tape
• small painting board
• waterproof ink drawing pens
• pencils, HB graphite and softer
• eraser
• sketch pad

Almost all of these supplies, plus my camera can fit in my big black tote (the same I took on my last trip to Italy). I am having trouble uploading images to the blog today, but you can see the bag in this picture. I couldn't fit my folding stool in my carry-on luggage, so I will just have to wing it and hope I can paint in areas where I'll be able to have a seat somewhere.

No blogging while we're gone, but I plan to post some pictures when we return. Ci vediamo!

To see my oil paintings of Lake Como and other places in Italy, visit my website here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist

Traveling with oil paints

From time to time I receive emails from other artists asking questions, and I thought it might be fun to try and post responses on my blog (the idea being that if there is one person asking, there may be more wondering also.) Here's the question:

I am traveling to Tuscany in June, 2007 to paint for 2 weeks. I have always used either pastels or watercolors, but this time I plan to bring oils. What paints and mediums do you bring and how do you pack them for the airlines? I don't want my stuff held back! Thanks for your help, S.P.

Ever since the tightening of the airline regulations, I have battled with this same question. When I last painted in oils overseas, my solution was to pack my easel as a carry-on and everything else (brushes, panels, palette knife, empty containers for mediums, etc.) went into the suitcase clearly labeled as artist materials. I did not pack my paints, mediums, or solvents, however. Instead, I did a bit of inquiring prior to travel to find out if there were any art stores in the vicinity of my destination. Fortunately there were and I bought my paints, mediums and solvents overseas.

Shopping for art supplies overseas can be a lot of fun. There are things that are familiar and also some wonderful products that I hadn't had the opportunity of seeing before. I felt like a kid in a candy shop and I actually ended up delighted with my purchases. I found Rembrandt oil colors in tube sizes I hadn't seen in the U.S. They were small enough to make my load a little lighter, but large enough to last me the two weeks of my stay. When I was in France, I found that the art stores only had small, expensive containers of paint thinner, so I learned how to say "turpentine" in French, and then asked for it at a hardware store. So, it can really be a fun adventure if you're up for it. However, if you are limited on time, you may prefer to just take the chance and carry your paints overseas. With that in mind, I am including a couple of articles that do a good job of addressing some of the issues that might arise:

Advice from the Gamblin Website

Advice from Pochade.com

p.s. If you do decide to shop for supplies at your destination, keep in mind that European countries use the metric system, so their canvas sizes will differ from what our "standard" sizes are in the U.S. This is not an issue if you don't frame your work, but if you use only standard size frames, this will be a matter of concern.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Red Canvases

Since I put my first painting demonstration up on my website a couple of years ago, I have had a number of people ask me about the red toned canvas I used. That demo is a couple of years old. I should probably update that section of my site and add some newer demonstrations, but I just haven't had the time. I used to underpaint many of my landscapes with red (not architectural scenes, however). I rarely do this any more, except when I do my little minis. I used to feel some comfort in having something down on canvas besides the blank whiteness, and the red underpainting was kind of fun. But after a while I found it took too much time to apply the undercoat and I spent a lot of time trying to cover it up in the passages where I wanted it to be cool (such as in areas of far distance.) I think that the reason it still works on the little paintings is that the red undertone does make the colors pop, but with such a small surface I do not need to labor on covering it up for my cool distances.

I will still often tone my canvases with a rather opaque, neutral gray or a warm beige (a tone of raw sienna thinned and scrubbed in a translucent manner over the white of the canvas) when I paint out of doors. The neutral tone of the canvas reduces the bright glare. In the photo below you can see one of my gray-toned panels underneath the plain white ones.

Ideally your palette color should match the color of your canvas for accurate color mixing. In the studio I have a white palette and paint on white canvases. But outdoors my palette is either wood color or a neutral grey. It is not a "must" to match canvas and palette, but it does help to predict what the mixed color will look like when it's laid down on the canvas.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Pochade box

Clouds and rain have been rolling in, so no plein air these last couple of mornings. I have plenty to do in my studio as I'm getting some new work together for a show, so it works out fine. In the meantime I thought I'd focus this morning's post on my one of my plein air setups. There are TON of options out there for plein air painters--everything from pochade boxes to classic French easels and beyond. Early on I had a full size French easel, but I found it to be too heavy for me, and I hated all of the wingnuts. Inevitably one would end up falling off during transport and without that wingnut to secure the easel leg, you're pretty much out of luck. If I ever did get another French easel, I would probably go for something like the Julian half box which is much lighter weight and not so cumbersome, in my opinion.

I currently work with two plein air setups for oils. One of them, my pochade box, I use quite often. Here is a picture of my pochade box:

I hang a roll of paper towels from a bungee cord on the front handle, and a grocery bag also to hold my spent paper towels. My paints, thinner, and medium store below the sliding palette, and my canvas stores in the lid.

A pochade is a French term meaning "quick sketch" and refers to the color studies that artists would create in the open air often for later reference in the studio. Original pochades were popular with 18th and 19th century landscape painters. They were small "cigar boxes" with hinged lids. Like my pochade box pictured above, the lid served as an area to hold the canvas or panel, and the bottom part of the box was used to store paints and a palette. It was a very simple affair and small enough to hold in your hand, sometimes with the use of a little thumb hole cut into the bottom of the box.

Currently pochade boxes range in sizes from 6x8" to 12x16". Prices for pochade boxes range widely, but if you are handy it is possible to make your own, as the design is really very simple. As for me, I am NOT handy like that!

I bought this little 9x12" pochade box online and I like it quite a lot. It weighs about 5 1/2 pounds, and with optional accessories can hold canvas panels from 6x8" on up to about 16x20". It has a tripod mounting plate on the bottom side to mount onto a camera tripod. My brand is a Bogen Jr. Manfrotto tripod, which is lightweight but sturdy.

I am constantly trying to find ways to compact and lighten my setup, but right now I carry all of my supplies in a large tote bag that I purchased from LL Bean (shown just behind my tripod). It works okay for short distances and for flat areas where you can just strap it onto a rolling luggage cart, but if I'm hiking in the mountains, probably not. In that case, I'd probably benefit from paring things down a bit.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Plein air outing (04/11/06)

I woke up this morning to a perfect, cool spring day so I set out early to do a little plein air painting. I experimented with a very limited palette, which was definitely challenging for me, especially when painting outdoors. My colors were three versions of the primary colors, (yellow red and blue, appearing as cadmium yellow pale, alizarin crimson, and ultramarine blue on my palette) plus white. I also added a fourth paint color, pthalo green, which is a highly tinted transparent warm green that can be used to mix a variety of colors beyond just green. My aim is to do some smaller paintings (pochades) as often as I can this spring and summer. On a sunny day, I find that I can only work on one scene for about two hours a session because beyond that the light has changed too drastically. By staying small I can do studies and cover the canvas within a limited amount of time. Small paintings also require you to paint loosely, as they cannot take a lot of detail unless you use a tiny brush. The whole idea for me though is to paint loosely and sharpen my ability to capture accurate color notes and the light effects in nature, not to render everything in a precise manner.

Here is the resulting 8x10" painting I did:

This is a redbud tree sitting along the banks of a little pond at a park near my house. It is definitely loose, but I will need to practice more with the limited palette as I did not get the contrast in the values, nor the colors quite as vibrant as I would have liked. Even so I think it is worthwhile to experiment with the limited palette as a way of really learning more about color mixing. 

I think this is probably about 1 1/2 hrs. worth of work. It may have taken a little less time if some of the park attendants had not come by wanting to chat. It was probably around 10 a.m. by the time I really got into it, and the light moved very quickly. I started out with my easel in full shade and ended with up with my canvas sitting entirely in the glaring sun, which made it hard to see anything. For this reason I decided it was time to pack up. Many people erect an umbrella over their work space to deal with this problem of moving light and shadow. With both the canvas and the palette in the shade, it is easier to see your colors. Dappled light or direct sunlight on the canvas and/or palette makes it very difficult to see and mix anything. I do have an umbrella but I was too lazy to bother with it today. That'll teach me!

I haven't decided if I will do any more with this painting, or if I will just keep it as a reference and as a learning exercise. I don't want to do too much, but I may see if I can push the values (the lights and darks) a little more. In any event, even if some of my plein air paintings never reach the "finished" stage, they are worthwhile for the experience of honing my observation skills.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Digital Cameras

I had some inquiries at my recent workshop about the kind of digital camera I use, so I thought I would post that information here:

What I use is a Canon G5 Digital Camera . I am no expert on these kinds of things, but I did a lot of research before purchasing, and this is a good 5 mega-pixel camera. At the time of purchase it was NOT cheap, but it had the highest number of mega-pixels on the market in an attainable price range. This is no longer so. There are many other very good cameras on the market, but the G-5 is still very good, so I will have to stick with this one for a while longer.

It is not compact, but more like a traditional body single lens reflex camera. This is something I will need to reconsider in the future because I travel so much and now long for something more compact. It does have a good zoom and can shoot macros (for close up shots) which were the two criteria that were high on my list of priorities. But it is not good at all for action shots (something I don't really need for landscapes and city shots).

The only thing I really don't like about my camera is the lens cap. It would be much better if it had an automatic retractable lens, as the cap can sometimes fall off and you end up needing to clean the lens a lot. (I had a time when I was in Italy trying to figure out how to say, "do you have any lens paper?" in Italian. I think I ended up saying like "Do you have anything for to clean this?" pointing at my lens.) This problem may have been remedied in the next generation of this camera though. There is a newer version out now (the Canon G6  ) that has 7 megapixels. There are also other cameras that have 8 MP and more, so one has a lot of choices, depending on the budget of course. Basically the more MP's you have the higher resolution images you can shoot. The G5 has been discontinued, but is still sold through various outlets. Here is a VERY detailed review of the G5.

You can read more about newer Canon cameras, including the next release of my model (the G6) here.
If you have an opinion about a good digital camera with good zoom and macros, feel free to post a comment about it!

Studio Work

Even though yesterday was the first day of spring, it is still pretty cold here. The days are actually varying wildly in temperature, which is typical for March in Richmond. Today temperatures will top out in the mid 30's, but by the weekend it is supposed to be in the upper 60's. Anemones, daffodils, cherry blossoms and forsythia are everywhere, and yet weather reports are actually calling for snow.

So, for a while longer I rely on my sketches and photos to inform my work. I work in the summer months in the studio too, but in warmer weather I can also break out for mornings painting and sketching in the open air. There is nothing quite like working from life. But when conditions are not ideal (or when you have long departed from your subject matter), I have devised (with my husband Dave's computer help and expertise) a way of working in the studio that exceeds working from printed photos.

When I travel to my painting destinations, I take literally thousands of digital pictures. I take shots both up close and far away, and I also shoot the same scene from several different angles if possible. The benefit of shooting digital is that I don't need to buy loads of film, and then worry about whether it will survive going through the x-ray machines at the airports. I can also see my images immediately and delete the ones that are clearly deficient.

When I get home I save my images onto a CD and work directly from a computer monitor that sits next to my easel. As it is, even digital photography is still one generation removed from nature. When an image is then printed off onto photo paper, the scene is even further removed. Printed photos tend to further wash out light areas and blacken out the darkest shadows, so a lot of detail is lost.

Viewing the images directly in digital form on my monitor allows me to see them in a truer light than if I had to print them off. Another advantage is that I can zoom in on a segment of the photo to see more detail--something not possible with printed photos. Of course you have to have taken the picture at a high enough image resolution in the first place, so I have a number of flash cards that hold a lot of large pictures. If traveling for extended periods it is even a good idea to download images along the way to CD or laptop, if possible, so that you have more room on your flash card (or memory stick) to take more pictures!

Here is my monitor/easel setup:

 

Off to Key West

I'm off for a few days to bask in some Florida sunshine! I have determined to bring my gouaches and watercolors to make for a very portable plein air setup. Sometimes it is good to experiment and move beyond the comfort zone. I was extremely tempted just to bring my oils, but the compactness of watermedia is hard to beat. I managed to fit almost all of my art supplies into a small 9x12" pack. If I can get my ducks in a row, I hope to post to the blog while traveling. Best wishes, Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes www.jenniferyoung.com Contact

Fun with Gouache

I spent some time yesterday playing with gouache paints so that I could see how I liked working with them as a possible candidate for my portable studio. Gouache is a water based medium; basically it is an opaque watercolor. While as an oil painter I wouldn't exactly call it opaque, it is more so than traditional watercolor. I've worked with many different water media before, including gouache, but it has been some time. Here's what I discovered:

My "oops" moments:

• Some of the colors don't behave at all like either watercolor or oils. In general the gouache colors were somewhat darker and took some experimenting to get the mix I wanted.
• The paint dries very quickly! In the future I may rethink squeezing out big blobs on my palette all at once (an overzealous oil painter's habit.) If I painted with these outdoors, I'd definitely need a spray bottle or drying retardant to keep my paints moist and fluid while working in the open air.

My "hey, cool!" moments:

• A very forgiving medium that is easy to work with. Most mistakes can be "lifted off" with water and brush. The opaqueness allows you to paint over certain passages and change the composition (something not so easily done with watercolor.)
• Versatile- can be mixed with watercolor and pen and ink. Acts as a watercolor for washes, but can also be laid down more opaquely and mixed with white.
• Easy cleanup. Like watercolor, just a little soap and water does the trick.

Gouache paintings are treated the same as watercolors in terms of care and framing. They should be displayed under glass and kept out of direct sunlight for best longevity. Gouaches tend to like a rigid surface, so a heavy paper or mat board is a good substrate for this medium. Here is a little painting I did of the Provincial countryside:

 

 

 

Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes www.jenniferyoung.com Contact

Preparing for Travel

House guests kept my pretty busy during President's day weekend, so not much time for blogging until now. It has snowed off and on here for the past few days, but nothing really lingers too long. The Key West trip coming up this weekend is seeming even sweeter as I look out my window and see yesterday's cold weather remnants on the ground. All I ask is to just keep the roads and airplane wings clear of ice until I can get down south! Today I am playing with some art supplies so that I can determine what to bring with me down to Key West. If I had no limitations I would just bring my oils and easel, because in my opinion there is just nothing like them! But a plein air painter or sketcher has to consider the most portable and lightweight options when traveling, and especially when dealing with the airlines, and oils don't always fit the bill.

Typical plein air travel gear can include:

• Easel or pochade box with attached tripod
• Paints
• Painting medium
• Paint Thinner (for oils- best to buy this at the destination if possible)
• Brushes and palette knives
• Hat and rubber gloves (optional but I am a messy painter)
• Canister for paint thinner (for oils) or water (for other water media)
• Small spray bottle filled with water (for water media)
• Paper towels
• Plastic bag for trash
• Bug spray and sunscreen
• Bottled water
• Small sketchbook and pencils (for working out compositions)
• Camera
• Painting surfaces (canvas, panels, papers, etc.)
• Wet panel carrier (for oils)

Other optional supplies might be:

• View finder (a little tool for determining your composition on the fly)
• Portable chair or stool
• Extra bungees and weights (for weighting your easel on a windy day)
• Umbrella
• A rolling case or dolly to cart all of this stuff around!

By no means am I saying that all of these supplies are required. Some watercolorists get by with two brushes, a watercolor block, sketch pad, a small container, some pens and pencils, and 3 to 5 paint colors, all stashed in a backpack. I think it is all what one feels comfortable with. A studio painter usually has more "stuff" within arms length, and paring down requires some effort and acclimation. I have done both studio and plein air painting, so I feel pretty comfortable with both. Even so the temptation is to bring more (maybe too much) stuff "just in case I need it". I'll try and post my painting kit here once I've figured it out.

-Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes www.jenniferyoung.com Contact

Travel Plans

Travel is one of the most joyful parts of my life as an artist. I love traveling to new and beautiful places to paint and gather inspiration, and I feel so fortunate that my business is able to support my adventures. This February we will be taking a much welcomed trip down to sunny Key West. We were supposed to go last Spring, but bad weather caused us to cancel those plans. Here's a scene I painted from photos I took on our last trip to Key West. It's called "Sunset Celebration". It measures 11x14", oil on canvas. For more details about the painting, check out my scenes of the American South section on my website:

I've also started planning for a June trip to Lake Como, Italy! I think the scenic views of the lake regions in Northern Italy are some of the most striking and beautiful in the country. The uniqueness of Lake Como is that it is distinctively Mediterranean, with lush flora, palm trees and cypresses, but set against a stunning backdrop of the Alpine mountains. I am so excited to be returning to this area, since the last time I went was many years ago and my camera broke on day two!

I will be painting on location both in Key West and in Como. I am primarily an oil painter but I'm considering bringing watercolors instead, since they allow for easier cleanup and are more portable. Plus, with the new airline regulations I have heard many instances where other artists have had their oil paints confiscated by the airlines. That's quite a setback to experience, considering the painter has to buy a whole new set of expensive paints at the destination site. Supposedly you can bring a letter from the paint manufacturer insisting that the oil paints are made with vegetable oils and do not contain but a trace of ingredients that would be considered "flammable".

But in past trips since 9/11 I have not wanted to take the chance. If I wanted to paint in oils overseas I ended up just shopping for small tubes of paint in the destination country. This can actually be a really fun experience, because there are so many fine products in the art stores of France and Italy. But it does take a bit of extra planning and time if one is going to be staying primarily out in the country.

Oil painting substrates

I thought I'd write a little here about some of the oil painting substrates I use on a regular basis.Canvas: The canvas I use most often for anything over 16x20 inches in size is one that has staples only on the back side of the stretcher bars. Small metal tacks are nailed into the sides of the stretcher to hold the canvas secure. This is a very sturdy, fine canvas with an old world look to it, primed with acrylic gesso. The surface is smooth enough so that it is not absorbent, but not so smooth that there is no canvas "tooth".

The stretched canvases I have been using for my landscapes are standard-depth canvas (around 3/4" deep), so generally the finished paintings are finished off with a frame for display. The great benefit to these canvases is that their depth allows them to easily fit into any variety of frame styles and mouldings, from the very traditional to the very contemporary.

I have lately been considering trying some gallery wrapped canvases for my landscapes. I used to use them in my older work, like the painting shown here. The gallery wrapped canvases are deeper than the standard canvas and have no staples around the perimeter, allowing the canvas edges to be painted as well. They offer a clean contemporary look, and have the benefit of being lightweight and versatile. While these canvases can be framed, one needs to find frames that have very deep rabbet depths so that the canvas edge (which is around 1 1/2" deep) does not extend beyond the frame when you look at it in profile. In general these canvases are meant to have painted edges and are displayed unframed.Panels: Often times for smaller works I will use birchboard panels or gessoed canvas that is mounted on a hardboard or wood panel. (I never use the canvases that are mounted on cardboard. They are too cheap and flimsy and don't hold up for professional use. In any event they are not archival and I use archival materials for my work.)The panels are great for painting out of doors (painting "en plein air") because they are flat and can be packed and carried more easily than stretched canvas. Sometimes I will prime these panels with a neutral base coat of gray or raw sienna. I use these when I travel and for smaller works no larger than 16x20":

 

 After a while they do get heavy, however, so I am always in search of the most lightweight option available! The lightest I've found is the birchboard panels, but these are not commercially available. The birchboard (shown here, bottom gray panel) can be purchased at the hardware store in larger sheets that I have cut down to size. They have a smooth side (for painting) and a rough side. However, I prime them on both sides to seal them and prevent warping.