A Question

The majority of westerners view a painting from left to right. This is due to the fact that’s how almost all western writing systems read. This is very important to consider as an artist when creating a composition, or is it?

The practice of skim reading is rising. It’s mostly because of the internet. The use of headings, bullet-pointed lists, and text boxes are becoming more prevalent, even in traditional publishing. I recently read a non-fiction book that had all of these.

 I was reading an article about reading comprehension (yeah, I read about reading) and it explained how skimming trains the eyes to move without discipline. I stopped and wondered if that has any impact on art.

So my question to you is, ‘do you think because of this we’re going to see a change in art?' More specifically composition.

Current Read: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

I'm currently reading, Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. 

I find most of it common sense, but a reminder every now and then is always good. I like his no nonsense, just sharing approach to social media. He mentions how the 'pre-digital age' artists have trouble with just sharing, with having that amount of information online. I related to this because it's not my normal nature to share. I'm a 'on a need to know basis' type of personality, you'll when I want to you to know. I'm trying to work on this, for my writing skills, if nothing else. But I've had a bit of a rocky start if the dates on these posts have anything to show.  Some of the illustrations are great and put things into perspective simply and straightforwardly. Like this one explaining how flow can turn into stock over time. 

Illustration: Flow starts out varied and little (posts, tweets, vids) and turns into Stock (series on blogs, youtube, etc.)

An Adventure in Staining

I just recently got around to glazing the companion piece to the painting I did in my last post. Since both paintings were done I needed frames. Not having a lot of money I thought about going the second hand route but because they are companion pieces I really wanted them to have matching frames.

 

So I got these unfinished frames and decided to stain them myself.

They turned out beautifully!  

 I picked out a stain colour called American Walnut. I wanted something like Cherry to bring out the blue green of the paintings and I think it was a good substitute.

It really brings the paintings to life!

Fire & Ice and Warm Flame by C.nick, 2015

Oil Glaze

So I glazed a painting with linseed oil not too long ago and I thought I would take some pictures and share the experience with you. This was my first time putting oil
over a painting. I've used oil in my paintings before but never have I just spread it on top of one. I learned this technique in a oil painting class that I recently took.

It worked wonderfully. It gave the spotty matte finish of my painting an even gloss and more depth. I think the reason why my painting was very glossy in spots and matte most everywhere else was a little bit because of the paints themselves and mainly because of using Turpenoid thinned paint in some areas and just paint or paint thinned with oil in others.

 The only downside to this is that it takes a really long time to dry. It just now entered a 'not wet' phase and it is very sticky. I'm impatiently waiting for it to dry because I need to take pictures of it for a contest.

If anyone has had experiences with this that they would like to or wouldn't mind sharing please put them in the comments.