AUTUMN IN CLUMBER

Wow Chas ! that's a tree and a half and the foreground leaf litter looks great, if I ever get around to using oils I hope I'm as successful, I saw in a art magazine recently a category for a competition 'Acrylic painted as oil' can anyone enlighten me as to what they mean please.

I really like this painting, eye catching, great colours

I agree with William and Petra: stunning colours!!! Great painting, well done!

I don't know anything about the way you have used the oils Charles but I think you've got a triumph of a painting. The colours are stunning and the tree is somthing else. I love it Charles, you ought to try more in this medium.

Thanks for the Infomation Chas.

Hallo Charles ... I'm deeply flattered; and if you'd like to send cheques, food parcels, boxes of cigars in tribute, don't hesitate... Your method - to be serious - is completely sound: alkyds on a primed sheet of watercolour paper work well; so would conventional oils, but I appreciate the point about drying times.. you could always use low-odour thinners, or Liquin with them, which should speed up drying; and you can use Liquin and thinners with alkyd too, of course. The result here is a very successful, highly colourful painting. I hope you'll do many more in this medium (while still working in your other media); I think it's helpful to paint in as many ways as you can - you learn something from each of them, and a surprising amount of the information is virtually interchangeable between media - because you begin to look at things differently if you have to represent them in different ways.

Charles, you really have an amazing talent for portraying trees and woodland scenes, whatever medium you use. This is superb in tone and design. The only reservation I have is using oil paint on watercolor paper. I have read somewhere that due to the nature of watercolor paper, oil paintings painted thereon are just not as durable, and your paintings deserve to be preserved for sure. Here in Singapore, our art shop carries a stock of paper specially primed for oils, and I imagine you should be able to find some in England. As I have never used it before, I don't know the brand of the paper, but I will ask when I next visit the art shop and let you know.

Seok, painting in oil directly onto watercolour paper would be asking for trouble, but Charles applies acrylic priming, which will successfully isolate the ground from the paint; it might be a good idea to lay acrylic varnish or medium over the BACK of the painting paper as well, so that any "overspills" (I always seem to get paint on the back of boards and papers) aren't able to penetrate the paper fibres. There are papers for oil painting, as you say; I haven't used them for some years - I notice the old Tyneham brand seems to have disappeared (or am advised it has by a colleague on the Forum page) but there is a range of Georgian oil papers, which might be worth a try. Primed w/colour paper should be absolutely fine, though - in fact, I'm so confident of this that Charles can come round and daub my face with Griffin Alkyd if it should let him down!

PS - I like this painting more every time I look at it.

Hi Charles, got your message, thanks for your advise re the oil pastels. I'm going to have a look at some and perhaps give them a try. Especially as they give results like this....hope I got the right painting this time....Appreciate your comments on Ann's guinea pigs.