Sunday, May 04, 2008

Casein Plein Air...Peshtigo River 6"x 6"

Went out again today...attemping another plein air with
the casein paints. This one along the Peshtigo River...

























for the heck of it, to see what I might learn...I might
varnish this one...then do a bit of glazing with copal
medium and oils.

3 comments:

Frank Gardner said...

I like how the one from yesterday came out better than this one. Seems like a tough thing to paint plein air with.
Is it tougher than gouache?
I think the glazing into this one might work nicely.
The piece has a good design.

Larry Seiler said...

For new painters, Frank...I often tell them it takes about 120 bad paintings to learn something about painting. I think when seasoned painters try a media totally foreign to them...though as much intuition engages as is possible, there is yet that learning curve.

It is as much a challenge to paint and struggle thru handling the new media, as it is just to tune in and do nature justice. It was a thing of seeing what the paint would do, while yet a part of me would hope to make a painting work. The scene had its intrigue with part of the foreground in shadow...a canopy, and the light in the distance. More of a challenging scene than yesterdays, so I wonder if that is the more the paint or just me? Hard to say...

For one thing...softening edges of contours to push edges back. Certainly an easier thing to do with oils, as the surface sucks this casein right up giving little of any wet on wet feel. Perhaps if I treated the paper with an acrylic medium first...hhmm...lots of stuff to experiment with I know that.

thanks..

Larry Seiler said...

Just want to report that this morning, I applied Krylon Kamar varnish to the caseins, and the varnish spray covered easily, no issue...

and now...I'll experiment with a bit of oil color glaze mixed into a thin layer of copal. We'll see what happens...