Oil Sketches

I call these "sketches," but they're not, really. They're artifacts of painstaking labor and lots of angst.

One year, I had the idea to make easy pocket money by banging out quick, Impressionist landscapes on small panels to sell in the small boutique galleries in Skagway during the cruise ship season. I thought it would be good exercise for me, since I naturally tend toward close, picky, endlessly detailed work, so I would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

I aimed to make small, quick paintings that would fit easily in a suitcase and fit the budget of the average summer tourist. The largest of these is about 11 x 14 inches, and they're all done on Ampersand's ready-made 3/4-inch cradled gessobords. I used

Winsor & Newton's Griffin Alkyd oil paints since they are so fast drying, and I was delighted by their extraordinary luminosity. I mean, just look at the sky in the first painting; that luminous effect isn't my doing, it was the Alkyd resin's.

To my dismay, however, I discovered that being an Impressionist is not so easy. I ended up laboring long hours and days over these little paintings, and even found the effort painful. I do like them, but, for me, they were very difficult to do. So, my pocket money scheme did not pan out.

Maybe someday, I'll try these again since I still have the feeling that it would be good for me for some reason.

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