Bot oil painting 1

My first oil painting. My first thought when I started to push the paint around was...goodbye, acrylics. I was immediately smitten. There's an almost magical quality to oils. The whole time I worked on this piece, I must've said "wow" a dozen times as I watched the paint blend and flow in cool and unexpected ways.

My only regret is that I didn't start oil painting sooner. That's ok though. I probably wouldn't have appreciated the medium years before. The time is right I guess. I'm truly enjoying the discovering process with this medium. I'm sure now that this will be a great love/hate relationship for the rest of my life because I can't wait to work on my next piece (which I am right now)

As for the piece itself, it's not really important. I didn't even conceive of anything before starting it. I just started slapping paint down to see how it worked. I ended up with a very similar bot piece to my first acrylic painting ironically. Once I decided on a bot painting I thought it'd be interesting to do a similar color scheme and everything to see the differences between the mediums. There's a TON of differences. Not sure they'll be obvious to people seeing the scan or not, but it's very apparent in person.

I did this on a small gesso board. Really awesome but expensive surface to paint on. It's basically a gesso treated slab of masonite. The subtle texture is readily apparent in the scan.

So yeah, I'll be sticking to oils from now on I think and I look forward to sharing my progress as I go. Everyone has been extremely encouraging and generous with responses to my other painting endeavors. I very much appreciate it. It really does help me go forward.

Oils on gesso board

Bot © Chris Stevens