So here it is, a rainy day with no other pressing tasks to do. I should be painting. I’ve been waiting for a day like this to work on it. So why am I now sitting here feeling some sort of artistic paralysis? It’s a fear of moving forward. A fear of messing it up.
Which is ridiculous, because I could just wipe any new paint off at the end of my session if it’s bad. And that one follow-up thought is the way I smashed the fear. So here goes – time to get out the paints.
Procrastination
Ah, but first I need to put a fresh palette glass down. That involves cutting the glue away from the old one, lifting it and then putting a new one down. It needs to be framed in glue to keep it there. I keep 8 x 10 glass from frames just for this purpose. So let’s get that done first. I’ll try to remember to clean this one up every time I use it so it doesn’t need replacing again anytime soon.
Oh look, it’s coffee time now. At least the palette is all fresh and ready to go:
Finally, some paint on the canvas
Today I’m using yellow sandstone, magnetite, soot black, titanium white (outsourced), and primary yellow (outsourced).
Magnetite is a strange paint to make and work with. The dust particles are attracted to each other, and so the paint can be clumpy until you spread it out. So far I haven’t noticed it migrating once it’s on the canvas, but it’s something I’m watching for.
Made it past the fear of moving forward
And, it’s still working – the painting I mean. I didn’t ruin it as I feared I might. I finished the sky and hills. The next session will be the middle ground, the field behind the owl. After that, the trees along the fence line and the fence posts and wire.
Not a whole lot of difference in the ‘before and after’ except that I brought the lighter end of the sky up to the level I wanted, and clarified the hills. No need for a lot of detail on things in that distance, so I’m happy with where that part stands now.
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Author/Artist Info
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In the summer of 2018 I began making watercolor paints from the rocks, clay, and other resources of our land here in the Ozarks. In 2023 I began experimenting with the same pigments in oils. I love this medium and now paint in oils almost always. I call them Wild Ozark Paleo Paints, because they’re made in a way very close to the same way paints were made when man first put a hand-print on the wall of a cave. I use very small amounts of outsourced pigment for blue, white, and sometimes yellow to offer a greater range of hues built upon the earthy local pigments. My specialty is painting nature, specifically the nature that surrounds me here in the remote hills of northwest Arkansas.
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Madison Woods
@wildozark (Instagram, Twitter, Threads and FB)
madison@wildozark.com
