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Week 4, lets settle the score...

Writer's picture: Robert HopkinsRobert Hopkins

Updated: Nov 5, 2022

While painting yesterday, with the palette 90 degrees vertical the oil in the paint was running down the paper. Not good. Beside being distracting it was working into some mixed colors. I think I will put the palette paper back on top of the desk, flat, so that it does not do that. I'm going to paint again today. I had fun yesterday. I want to see if I can do it again so quickly. Should I paint from a photo or should I use another artists painting as my reference? I should use a reference. I'll get back to you.


I decided to paint one of Karen Margullis's paintings. She paints in pastel so I am trying to do the same thing in oils. I look forward to a fail, but I am giving it a shot! Let's see what this finally becomes. This is acrylic paint on top of a Naples Yellow ground canvas:

Here are three of Karen's steps. Her Palette she selected in pastels:

First blended layer on top of an orange yellow ground:

Final painting... Wonderful! And it took her 20 minutes to paint. Go figure...

Karen Marguillis©, January 2022, pastel on UArt pastel paper.


* * * I have scraped the work ideas above * * *

I am instead going to do a Samir tree. I am jumping around too fast, I need to paint at least five more Samir paintings before I move on to something different. "ODHD" boy!


Here is what I am going to attempt today (Saturday):

Samir Godinjak©, 2022, Tree, Oil on canvas panel

And... Not so much... Not every painting is going to come out well. They just don't. But we can try! Let me see if I can figure out what went wrong:

  1. The sky... Looks like leopard skin! Not bad, but not good. Don't laugh!!!

  2. The tree is too splotchy.

  3. The ever-green color in the middle of the tree: not so much.

  4. The background trees need to come down in color. To saturated.

  5. The whole tree is just one big "clump". More dark patches like Samir's?

A failure. But, I am still posting it here to remind me what not to do. I could have used a larger brush on the tree leaves. More dark-blue background splotches in the tree.


I'm gonna go and take a nap... Let it go Lukey!


On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a... 6. Thank God next week is here tomorrow! I will re-do this painting again in the future; because I like the source material.

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