Delayed Gratification

It Never Ends like it Starts ...
by Pat Darnell

Bryan\College Station, TX  |  As I conduct myself into a 72 month project to get my last two bairn through college... I propelled myself into a frenzy of contemptible war with my brushes.

I attempted to "get closer" to my paintings, only to find myself rebelling needlessly against my brushes. I wish someone would volunteer to pistol whip me when I start refusing to clean my brushes.

This is not a good thing. Oil painting is about delaying the result. Remember in ceramics classes where you learned to paint or glaze with a substance with anticipation of it coming out a different color after firing? Oil painting is similar basis for delayed gratification involving also slight color modification over time.

As the oils, thinners, and vehicles evaporate from the surface of the painting, they leave behind the pigments, right? So what you painted three weeks ago is not what necessarily you have now in front of you. As for Acrylics, *yuk*, you see what it is as soon as the water evaporates.

This is why I call oils more forgiving -- as allowing me mitigation up front for future mess ups, because of my lack of talent in certain areas. The desired result is to have the subject of the painting "jump out" at you for the life of the piece.

Older paintings start to dim, as the painting becomes drier and drier... so to speak. But with modern substances, and our liberation from having to crush deadly pigments and add linseed oil, we can proceed as we please. Just pop down to Hobby Lobby, or Dick Blick on line, and "buy" all the sale stuff. My rule of thumb in using modern oil painting paraphernalia is three days drying between major glazes and such. Detailing can be done anytime you can reach without smudging is my lot.

Note: My palette changes every time I happen onto a hand basket of leaking, expiring, or discontinued tubes of paint.

And that is how I attacked my 72 month goal.

Ideally I could put a year's worth of "Tuition" down for each kid  with a hundred paintings if each one pulls $100 per painting. That could offset $10,000 per year tuitions. Eh? That is ideally.

That means the formula depends on 100 paintings a year. Here is the trick: "a painting a day" in oils is "ambitious." And a "commercial value" for a painting a day -- well, is it worth a $Bill to someone?

Probably not. I have estimated that about "three" in thirteen paintings have that kind of commercial value. However, I also estimate that about "one" in thirteen usually "jumps off the canvas" and has a greater value. Eight remaining oils hover in there at "mas y minos" values -- depending on your sales force.

Luckily, I personally have a sales force in my Wife's abilities: She can [and does] sell shampoo to a bald man. And our daughter has been her apprentice for sixteen years. So as a trio we could invent a market that would average the needed tuition offsetting sums. NO?

Pat Pend OUT. Good Luck Wid' It.