I use dry media a lot. Charcoal, pencil, pastel,sepia in all variations. I learned to control them and comparing to paints they seemed more friendly and simple to me. I don’t need to think about drying layers, mixing colours, distorting paper, fading tones etc. The result with dry media strict and straight, mostly pure form reflected in monotone. One the other hand my aspiration always has been oil painting. When water colours and gouache I simply didn’t liked, oils I was afraid of! Dry media was a sort of preparation to use oils and I considered to use them later when my academic skill will be more solid. Adding to this all complications with oil painting techniques such as mediums, priming, colour mixing etc., I kept postponing my meeting with oils and worked with dry media only. Last winter was difficult and full of anxious thoughts. It caused me a sort of burn out and depression. I kept clinging to working and art for nothing much of other options left to keep me afloat. Spring came and brought some relief and along with this a trivial thought that waiting for a perfect moment is a waist of time and futile expectation. I think I was exalting and idealising oil paints too much. May be for some time I was in need of such ideal of a noble stage of the art journey which requires a lot of preparations, as another motivation kind. After these stressing times I had thought that idealising oils is childish, I don’t need any particular cause or moment or level to step in. I started from videos at least to sort out technical aspects and it was not too difficult. It’s difficult for a perfect results on some heavy art work. But to start bare minimum is like a bunch of brushes, dark warm and dark cold paints plus white (3 tubes in total if to work in monochrome) and a medium to dilute the paint oil or varnish. As a canvas can work anything thick enough and primed in acrylic paint. Actually, I skipped the last point with priming and just used usual office paper for printer with water proof lining to prevent oil from soaking thru paper and spreading around. You can see the result.
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