Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Oil and Wool Paintings

I'm not sure how this started but recently I discovered the art of wool painting. Not just dyeing wool, but using wool as the palette colors and creating a painting by felting the wool.  I think I was searching online for more wool to buy and dye and stumbled upon this little gem of art. I loved the idea and spent days dyeing wool to create my own palette of colors. Whatever I have left over can be used in my yarn, or leftovers from yarn can be used in wool paintings.  I think I have found my medium!

My wool: dyed and drying

Learning to felt with this little sunset wool painting


Now I'm taking pictures of landscapes for reference but I also want to paint my own landscape sketches to use for my wool paintings. Going to try little 6x8 panels painted in oils, outdoors. Plein air. Somehow photographs don't capture all the colors that we see. People have painted like this for years so there must be something to it!

So, it was time to pull out the box of oil paints that had been sitting around for over 10 years. Would be great to use them up and practice a bit before tackling a landscape outdoors. Here are my first attempts, trying to mix colors and get a feel for the paint. Feels very strange, oils. I'm more used to acrylic. The slow drying of oils is very nice...