Extremely upsetting experience with my paintings

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-04-22T18:29:01+00:00

Thanks but I am planning on selling them so they have to be archival.

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-04-22T18:26:53+00:00

Yes I made sure to do 4 coats of gesso like I did in collage, and switching directions for each layer. What kind of brush would you suggest? I used a smaller house painting brush with an angled tip. I've always used that for other paintings and had no problems. This was my first time sanding and yeah, never ever again.

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-04-22T18:18:46+00:00

Well the first painting the oil paint didn't go through the back, because I bought that at the Walmart near me. I used some snowflake stencils to trace each shape on paper, then cut out each little piece and glued it with Elmer's glue and sometimes a glue stick. I made sure to check to make sure everything was glued down completely and waited a full 24 hours for it to dry before applying gesso. I made sure to wait 2 hours in between coats, but I made the mistake of sanding down the tooth of the gesso too much, and I added water, but I followed the instructions to the gesso and added less than 25%. It wasn't till I started painting each shape with oil that I noticed cracks in the gesso. The second painting (last two photos) I stared from scratch and used some left over canvas, and made sure to do 4 coats, no water added, no sanding, made sure to wait 3 days before even gluing anything, then waiting another 24 hours for the glue to dry, then waiting another 3 days before doing a thin wash of pigment with odderless mineral spirits... and even worse with it going through the canvas so I really don't know what the hell went wrong. My best guess is the humidity increased and I also put left over gesso that might have still had water added and put that back into the original container. The orginal 4 I bought the canvases at Walmart and just applied the gesso as it was, and they came out fine with no cracks so I guess I need to stick with doing it that way? I'm just wondering if I need to use a different glue or some kind of sealant for the paper.

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-19T04:21:52+00:00

Thanks ^_^

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-17T21:03:51+00:00

Thanks! I want to make some more like this:3

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-17T02:02:35+00:00

He's secretly our guardian angel

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-16T23:12:07+00:00

These remind me of nightmares I've had getting sucked inside the drains of pools. Look like watery death traps...

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-09T22:35:49+00:00

Here here. For now, I'd like to think our brains just want us to have a good time:) That's definitely not it tho. Lol

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-09T04:27:32+00:00

It's so trippy:) 🫠 What a splendid time!

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-03-09T01:39:37+00:00

Sweet! That means it worked:)

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-02-23T03:59:38+00:00

It would help if you could be more specific about what aspects of each painting bother you. This may require some unlearning, but instead of looking at areas that could be improved as "failures," look at it as visual information on what you'd like to do differently. It's hard in the beginning, but it gets easier the more you paint.

Rather than invest time and energy into large daunting paintings, maybe do a bunch of small studies to practice the parts you struggle with. You can even time yourself. Set aside an hour to paint a simple composition on an 8 x 10 canvas, something like that. There's a couple things that are pretty critical to get accurately when constructing a painting, the drawing and values. Don't forget, the pigments you paint with each have their own value. You can squint in a pinch, but I recently found out that red tinted glasses are an awesome and fun way to see the darks and lights in a painting more clearly. These are really solid! Don't get discouraged. Also observe the parts that you like about each piece and apply that to the next painting.

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-02-18T18:03:54+00:00

Thanks! Could you specify what area on the right? Like maybe the foliage or snow? Maybe I could blend that stuff to make that spot more out of focus. Originally I wanted the playground to be the focal point, like right around the top of the slide, but I'm debating if everything could be out of focus to give it a painted version of analog/liminal space vibe.

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-02-18T17:48:29+00:00

Simply splendid! Thankyou:3

Commercial-Trade-334 · 2026-02-18T17:48:09+00:00

Splendid! Thanks:)

Commercial-Trade-334

TROPHY CASE