Back to Oils: 22 Years Since

It's been quite some time since the last time I squeezed a tube of paint, dipped a brush in color, and sculpted a representation of the image before me on canvas...22 years to be exact. Though I always had a niche and love for drawing throughout my childhood, by age 11 my Grandma Jackie thought it was time to share her hobby of oil painting with me. It became an after school event for a few days a week. I would walk home from school, drop off my bookbag, grab my box of oil paint supplies and walk another mile to Grandmas for a lesson. She has taught me more than just the process of painting and the different ways of applying paint, she taught me how to use color. Every painting was done with great care, never rushed. Every mark had a purpose.

In the past week I've been exploring oils. The picture above is a work in progress near completion. Oils, like pastels, do offer long standing colors and give me a much looser interpretation. Drawing mediums do take more care in preservation, whereas oils take less. Oils will give me the ability to work in much larger scale where pastels cannot. As I intend to add oil painting into my work, I will not abandon the fine art of drawing.