If you've been following my posts, you'll remember my recent discovery of waterbased oils... LOVE THEM. I received a starter set from my friend T for Christmas last year. I went online and did a little reading about waterbased oils and got some mixed reviews. One was often repeated that they just "weren't the real thing." Well, that maybe true, but considering that I haven't painted with oils in about 20 years, it's like I don't know if I'm missing anything.

If you've purchased paints before in a starter set, you know that you usually have the basic colors; red, blue & yellow. You'll get white, maybe black. And if it's a lil more extended, a green or another shade of yellow or blue or red. If you've ever taken any sort of color theory class, you know that all colors are created using your primaries of red, yellow and blue. Here's the thing, you can spend hours and tons of paint trying to mix that perfect brown. And that's what I was doing with the starter set. Here I am mixing and mixing and I'd get it and then to create more quantity (because I had a big space to fill) add more and boom! that perfect brown is gone. Again. Well, I wasn't ready to buy more paint, Lord knows I have enough art supplies to sink a boat, so I started working on Luna's portrait with the starter set.

Luna's Portrait in Oil

first layer

16x20 inch

So I think I got as far as I could before I realized, "God, I'm using up all my blue!" and thought that I really can't get the blacks I wanted but these primaries alone. I believe I could, but again, would take forever and a day and use up most of my paint. Not to mention, I forget sometimes how slowly oil dries. I've been working with watercolor for so long. So I would start painting and try to fill in a truly darker space only to have it mash with the paint that was already on the canvas (the left side of Luna's face in the first layer was a real sticking point to me). I had to get the Burnt Umber and Sienna that I use all the time in my watercolors. I trotted off down to my local art supply store and sadly I find out that they're not selling Windsor Newton brand, but another called Echo (?) ... hmmmmm. The guy at the counter was kind enough to give me a sample of the Echo colors and placed a special order for me for the WN brand.

I went home and tried this Echo brand... eh. They're certainly not as "thick" as the WN so it was more of a wash than more saturated color. Which to me is more of a pain in the butt. Because again, these paints take a very long time to dry, so if I wanted to make my paint more saturated on the canvas, it just ended up swirling around and not sticking. I decided to wait for the WN before I continued on the Luna portrait again.

And waited and waited... ugh! I called on the following Friday to see if they were in and they weren't. Then I got a call on Monday that the orders came in but "we don't know why but yours wasn't in there." UGH! By this time I'm chomping on the bit to get crackin at the painting ESPECIALLY since it hangs out in my kitchen so I'm looking at it every day! So they were kind enough to give me 20% off for the mix up and the paints should be in this Monday... we shall see. In the mean time, I went to another art store and picked up the WN sienna & umber. I would've liked to stick with my small art supplier, but if you're not carrying the things I need what choice do I have?

Luna's Portrait in Oil

So with umber and sienna and some new smaller canvases I'm ready to take on more paintings with waterbased oil paints. Now, the real question is: who will buy them? Because I can't keep doing this and stacking up canvases in my already too small condo.

Luna Loves You!