I was able to get through the mental hurdles:
1. This work was on the office / bedroom easel and I’d felt as if I didn’t even want to finish the work, much less empty the easel.
2. The two easel areas in the smaller studio room had other frames on them and I have not decided what to do yet with either of them especially the portrait landscape shape one because it has issues with the woodwork that I had not fixed yet.
3. The moving overall seemed a headache especially the repeated easel adjustments after already having done them, but once I knew Silver Moon would do well there I made it happen. I even learned a trick using the clamps so that I did not get tortured by gravity and the easel bottom runner falling while trying to raise it. It worked like a champ especially while tightening, which eliminated it “crawling”.
4. I have never placed oil paint on top of acrylic paint before and had only learned it in recent weeks or months during a research session but it worked out very well I think.
This all enabled me to transition piece which I had very serious intentions about before and had lost interest in due to the above mentioned issues with acrylics.
I organized the two easels in both rooms, move various frames and tool caddies, and moved Silver Moon into the smaller studio room, installed it on an easel, and immediately mopped on a layer of Indigo across 90% of the surface.
I’m hoping the linseed oil wasn’t too much and I certainly plan to build up while it’s moist and also work with stand oil or whatever other medium that I can to keep this thing sticky so that I can really build it up with the brush strokes which seem to be the true nature of this work aside from the pallet and a perfect positioning and lay out that Ryder did.
I am so much happier with this medium and immediately feel a new connection to the work order before I was turned off by the coarse and limited nature of acrylics.
I don’t completely hate acrylics but I now know what I can use them for in a limited capacity as far as composition and layout goes.
