Tonight’s demonstration was given by Deb Bartos. Deb paints in water-soluble oils, and likes to paint landscapes and gardens in light-filled. Using saturated colors, often from life in nature. She has been painting since 1991 and says using water-soluble oils makes it easy to paint plein air.
Deb began her painting of Dillon Reservoir by doing an acrylic under-painting of yellow ochre. She works dark to light, unlike traditional watercolor where you work light to dark. To keep her paintings loose, she uses a scrumbing technique. She said water-soluble oils use no solvents, are less toxic, and easier to clean your brush using just water.
Deb began by painting the sky. Deb never uses a color straight out of the tube and mixes colors to get the shade she wants, often using white. She explained that paint color properties are usually the same, whether oil, acrylic or watercolor. She also said to remember to use som opaque and transparent colors to the effect and coverage needed.
Deb worked from a photo she had taken when it was close to sunset. To warm up the sky close to the mountains, she added some Cadmium Red Light to her blue sky mixture. She also paints in thin layers to build up her colors.
Since the water-soluble oils don’t dry as quickly as watercolor, Deb uses a silicone scraper, similar to a spatula, to pickup and move her paint around. This allowed her to remove some paint to make room for her Aspen tree on the left.
Deb also does not use thick layers of paint on her backgrounds, reserving the thicker layers for the foreground and showing more brush stokes there.
To paint her trees, Deb used the side of her brush, just laying on colors and not brushing the colors on. To define the tree branches, she used her scraping tool again to drag it through the wet paint.
Deb continued her scrumbling technique and dabbing more paint around, adding and building up the colors of her landscape.
Deb’s finished painting!
Deb is a highly awarded artist with many awards, exhibitions, commissions and has been featured in many publications!
If you are interested in seeing more of her work, please visit Deb’s website.
