"Palm Silhouette", Oil on Canvas
18" X 24" Landscape Painting

This is a progression of photographs taken at intervals of about 2 hours as this landscape painting develops. Carl will attempt to use a media he hasn't played with before: water mixable oils. The reference photograph for this is one his daughter, Christina, and son-in-law, Jeff, took recently when they vacationed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (you can see the photo on the table in the image above).

This evening Carl tested three different colors of blue to find the color that mixed to shades of blue in the photograph. It turns out it is cobalt blue. Carl stained the canvas to begin this painting with a white acrylic gesso with a small amount of cobalt blue acrylic mixed in. Carl pulled some value lines of color horizontally across the canvas to prepare the way for the waves he will develop later. After staring at the photo for a while he realized there was a horizon line where the air met the water behind the palm trees, so he set the line in the canvas underpainting.

Carl said again this evening, as he so often when starting a project, that he's not at all sure this painting will "work", or even where it will go as he adds to it in the days ahead. Carl is deciding on whether to use a palette knife to pull in the detailed wave lines, or perhaps a fine brush. He actually wondered out loud about painting the palm tree lines. In the reference photo they are extremely defined with shape points and thin blades. Carl's weighing the benefits or going realistic vs. painting a more impressionistic version of the painting (I'm guessing he'll go realistic based on his previous work).

So far Carl has not created an oil painting he was satisfied with. He would enjoy finally creating an oil painting that has the detail and quality he can get with acrylic. Perhaps this painting will be the one? Watch and see...

The oil paints for this project are Winsor and Newton Artisan Water Mixable Oils. They are non-toxic and clean up with soap and water.

This project is an original paintig Carl made based on a reference
photo of a morning silhouette of palm trees at the ocean.

Copyright(c) , 2004 Carl E. Gluck. All rights reserved.