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Today’s image is a detail of a commissioned portrait that I did in 2009. I had almost forgotten about the painting, until I discovered this photo on my external hard drive. The portrait was painted in acrylic, which interests me since I am now working on some paintings in acrylic, my first time returning to the medium in a few years.

Acrylic is a challenging medium, if you are used to working in oil. It dries quickly, and is less highly pigmented than oil, so the colors are comparatively muted. I worked almost exclusively in acrylic for a few years, from about 2005 to 2009, after I discovered that I was allergic to the alkyd medium that I was using to make my oil paint dry faster. My palette tended toward muted colors, even after I returned to oil painting (using non-toxic linseed oil as a medium), and I am now thinking, for the first time, I think, that it could have been the acrylic paint itself that lead me, at least in part, toward the limited value and color range in which I worked for years. In recent years I have been expanding this range.

I enjoyed the surprise of discovering the image of my commissioner’s late father. And it turns out to be Fathers’ Day today.

I painted my own father, who passed away in 2003, as a young boy in Family. This was one of a series of paintings I did in 2010-2011 which were based on old family photographs. It is nice to see this detail of the painting again.


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