Spending the day in front of a computer is draining. My eyes water, my mood dampens, and the midday slump lasts longer (midday slump- future blog post to come). So I’ve been doing everything I can to get time away from the screen. I’ve been spending a lot of mornings and afternoons outdoors during the work week. Since I as a staff member am closed off from the university gym, I’ve been running, walking, and jumping rope outside while the weather isn’t thick with humidity just yet.
Another non-screen hobby I’ve made an effort to revisit is painting. Besides work and online school, I make a lot of my art on the computer. I type my stories in Word or Google and I assemble my illustrations in Photoshop. There are a lot of advantages to working digitally, but with so many Zoom meetings and email scrolls, one can only hope to stare at something that doesn’t blink back glaring blue light. For my own sanity, I need to step away from the computer and physically make art.
An oil moon detail from a work in progress.
Traditional media is what I have been trained in. I went to school for it and I grew up drawing with pencils, crayons, and Bic pens. In high school, I met oil paint my senior year. We learned a flat, semi-transparent technique that involved gessoing a blank canvas, waiting for it to dry, then using oil paints by dipping the brush in turpenoid and painting on clean coats. In undergrad, we followed a similar technique involving turpenoid and linseed oil to clean the brush and paint flat layers. However, one of my professors taught me a new method for oil painting, one that didn’t involved flatness. We learned about thick painting, impasto, or what he called “sexy painting.”
For those unaware, oil painting is an age-old medium that many fine artists have used in the past. It stains easily and can be difficult to get out of clothes, plus it’s flammable. And unlike acrylic or watercolor, it takes a while to dry. My high school teacher’s instructions avoided disastrous cleanup, but with the impasto method, it can be very messy and smelly, especially if you use turpentine, not turpenoid. Painting with oils in thick coats is quite the scene; when I do it, it gets everywhere and I end up ruining brushes in the process. My fingers turn colors and I squeeze through tube after tube. Impasto oil painting is a cluster. And I love it.
Shenandoah Farm, View from Car, oil on canvas. 16x12”
There’s a certain richness one can find in color and texture when choosing the “sexy paint” route for oils. If you’ve ever seen a Van Gogh painting in real life, you’ll know what I mean. He’s probably one of the most famous oil impasto painters, for good reason. His work is vivid and expressive, it’s colorful and it makes the viewer want to visit his oil dream worlds. I think that’s what I love most about painting with thick oils. When used by those who understand its potency, there’s a lot of emotion in it.
It’s messy, it reeks, and it burns through money as tubes of oil paint are not cheap. In fact, oils are the most expensive paints at the store so the next time you’re scratching your head at the price of an oil painting at your local gallery, keep that in mind.
But oil paints are worth it. I love getting down and dirty with the pigment. I love the richness of mixed colors, I love using my scratchy brushes and my palette knife to get layers of texture on the canvas. I miss using my whole body to make art; when I have a big canvas in front of me, I do stretch and lunge and reach all around to angle each corner and get the perspective I’m looking for without touching a wet part of the painting. It’s fun, it’s like building or tinkering. Oil painting is creative problem solving.
Since I’ve been staring at screens day in and day out, I’ve managed to scrounge up some old canvases and revisit one of my favorite traditional mediums. I’m experimenting with subjects, though I’m mainly focused on natural landscapes with vibrant colors; I love high contrast and brightness, even in nocturnal settings. I’m grateful to manage my free time and to live in an area with so much inspiration; the Blue Ridge mountains are outside my window, and I’m surrounded by trees and fields.
If you’re like me and you’re sick of staring at a screen all day, I encourage you to find a hobby that involves traditional skills. Use your hands, get creative and get messy!