In good Kick-About style, I took this week’s Nicolas de Stael prompt as an opportunity to try my hand at oil painting. I don’t paint much, and never in oils, so I didn’t quite know what to expect or what I was going to do. We have these three narrow coloured-glass tumblers, which I set on a bright orange background and lit from behind. I worked from a photograph of the set-up and simply made a start by painting my small wooden board with lots of orange. After that (and drying the paint in the oven to speed things up), I began to depict the tumblers, varnishing between layers, letting it dry again, and then using very fine sandpaper to work backwards into some of the colours. I continued this process until I arrived at something I liked.
I enjoyed myself — particularly the idea of using sandpaper as a kind of ‘putty rubber’ to pull out patina. Another happy accident was how the scouring would sometimes find thicker, wetter paint and drag it around a bit. Not sure if this counts as ‘painting’! Didn’t really notice how ‘on the wonk’ the tumblers were – leaning to the left a bit – until I photographed them and saw them on here…
Red's Kingdom 
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