Revisiting oils with 'The Offering'.

         It's been a while since I've painted in oils. It was the medium that

 I first started painting with in my late teens. For years that was my medium of choice until I wanted to learn how to use 

water based paints....I'm still learning.

Lately, I've been craving the smell of linseed oil and turpentine.

Knowing that I would choose my subject from my sketchbook of drawings,

I needed to decide which one I would attempt to recreate in oils. 

This ink drawing that I call 'The Offering' is what I've decided on. At the end of the day, when sick of oil spills and corrupt politicians, if I am to have a painting around me to look at, let it be the simple gesture of a kindly 

old woman offering food to a stray cat.

I make another sketch of the original drawing showing how much 

of the drawing will be in the painting and then draw a series of faces.

Letting myself be free with the pencil, I allow her face to show itself to me

and am amazed and humored at what I see.

Somehow the end result will be a combination of these faces 

as they are now a part of me.

I apply gesso to the board and gather materials.

An old painting becomes a palette for mixing paint.

When I am finished using it this way, I can still use it 

to paint a new painting on.

The smell is wonderful.

My approach to painting in oils has always been to

first apply the paint quickly and freely and then slowly

develop the painting once I have the under painting in place.

And so it begins.