Terri Ficenec: Saying Hello!
 

I am really excited to be joining this forum!

My previous painting experience has been primarily for my own enjoyment. Recently, I started receiving requests for portraits after people noticed a portrait of mine (attached below) while it was at the local frameshop. I've always wanted to paint professionally, but until now lacked the confidence. Somehow this unexpected interest in my work, combined with turning 40 prompted me to actually try to make a go of it. (Call it a mid-life crisis, I guess it's now or never!)

I was somewhat at a loss as to how to price my work, how to structure contracts, etc. but browsing around this site and has already been very helpful! And the work I've seen posted is inspiring.

One thing I've noticed is that hardly anyone else seems to do portraits in acrylic. I would be interested in understanding why no one seems attracted to this medium? Is there less of a market for it?

"First Communion", Acrylic, 20" x 16"

Welcome Terri!

I paint in acrylic, but only for landscapes or more graphic work. The few times I have tried it for figurative or portraits I just could not get it to blend well enough before it dried - this didn't work well for the skin especially. Plus it just has a different look to it for me. I enjoy switching back and forth between oils, acrylics and liquid (ink-type) acrylics on paper.

Good luck!

Thanks Kim! I'll need it!

By the way, I visited your web site. Your work is beautiful. I especially like the way you captured the reflectiveness of the water in the "Nueces River". It reminds me of kayaking with my kids.:D

Hi Terri and welcome to the forum, it's a wonderful learning tool. I also began painting in acrylics, and have very recently switched over to oils. I found acrylics to be limiting in that it was much harder to blend than oils because of the fast drying time, and it was difficult to compensate for the fact that acrylics can dry a couple shades darker. I have only done a couple paintings in oil, but I love blending wet-in-wet, it's soo much easier and faster. When I first signed on to the forum I was also very aware of how few acrylic portrait artists there were, now I'm beginning to see why!

Hi Holly!

Before you posted a reply, I had noticed some of your acrylic paintings in various places on the forum, and was comforted to see that at least someone else was using acrylics for portraits (and it appeared very successfully!) But now I learn that you are switching to oils and I worry that I am making a big mistake getting into this with acrylics!

I would love to know more specifically about your experience converting to oils. How difficult was the transition to something that is wet for so long? (I think it would drive me crazy to have to wait even overnight or worse days to fix something I was unhappy with!) And, for comparable pieces, would you have a sense of how much time you might have spent using acrylic vs. what it would now take you in oil?

I've read your thread in the Media section on which oil paints to use (very helpful, by the way!) and have also experienced some of the same frustrations you mention: darkening paint as it dries, need to blend quickly or use glazing techniques to blend, etc. So now you've got me wondering whether I should be switching to oils.

I think my biggest concern -besides the initial expense of switching and adapting techniques- is storing (wet!) works in progress so that they are safe from my high spirited kids(8 & 9 years old)! I am just working in a corner of the kitchen right now.

Thanks so much for your thoughts!:)

Hi, Terri, and welcome.

I can't speak to the use of acrylics, but your comment about using oils, that: caught my eye. In oils, you usually don't have to wait to fix something -- that's one of the pleasures of the medium. In fact, usually you wouldn't want to wait until the paint is dry before you repaint. If you're painting thickly, you can apply a thick layer of new paint on any time. If thinly, you might need to scrape off the still-wet paint that's in the area you want to rework.

About the only in-progess waiting time is a 10 or 15-minute break to let the paint you've applied "set" a little, so that you can paint over it without just winding up with a muddy mix.

In fact, you'll find many posts here in which hints are given to keep the paint from drying too fast and making it difficult to come back later and paint "wet in wet", or blend, or whatever else a workable medium will allow. A dry oil painting actually creates its own troubles with respect to getting additional paint layers to adhere. This often requires the use of a tooth-restorative application of oil or retouch varnish.

At least you have young kids to blame for smears in the oil paint surface. It's my own fingerprints indicting me on most of my paintings.

Again, welcome. Have some fun here (it's a requirement of membership). You've already begun learning.

Cheers

Terri,

I had (and still have) many of your same concerns. As to the drying time, I have found that Winsor & Newton Artist's Oil paint mixed with flake white (which of course occurs all over the face), to dry overnight. This is when used with no medium or with just a little cold-pressed linseed oil for thinning, however I've applied the paint somewhat thinly. If there's no flake white, such as in a background I'm working on, it's taking several days to dry. I think it depends alot on the type of climate you're in, dry or humid. Although working wet-in-wet is wonderful, you can still rework an area that's wet by painting over top of it, but not pressing as hard so as not to mix with the paint below. I haven't tried scraping yet, as Steven said.

It's hard to give you an idea of time, as I really haven't used oils enough yet. However I would guesstimate that I could do the same oil painting in 1/3 to possibly 1/2 the time as acrylics.

Do what you enjoy and what works for you. If you're comfortable in acrylics, all the more power to you. However if you're interested in oils, what you could do to cheaply check it out is what I did. I bought several tubes (terra rosa, indian red, yellow ocher, cobalt blue, flake white 2), and did a rough painting of myself with an acrylic brush, just to see what it felt like. I was happy at how fast it came together. However I did it in one sitting, applying successive layers (which gave me some definite mush), and it took several days to dry. Then I ended up taking a portrait workshop, which for me worked out very well.

I do suspect that one could command a higher price for an oil portrait over an acrylic portrait, as oil is a more traditional medium, however that is up to debate.

As far as storage, perhaps you could use half of a closet (non-kid space that is) and rig a rack where canvases are placed vertically, but stacked basically with some air space in between, all facing a closet wall where they won't be accidentally touched.

Hope that helps some,

Holly - That's a huge time savings!

I think I'll be heading over to DickBlick.com to order a few Oil Colors so I can give it a try once I've finished the project I'm in the middle of now.

Thanks so much for the feedback and the encouragement! It makes me a little braver to hear your success and excitement with the switch! :)

It'll probably be a couple of weeks before I'm able to get into it with the oils, but I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Thanks again!

Steven - Hi and thanks so much for your feedback!

(I almost missed it as I scrolled right down to the bottom of the thread and Holly's was below yours. :o )

I'm not sure it would ever have occurred to me to scrape off the paint in order to rework the area. Wet-on-wet is sounding more and more appealing! :)

I'm excited about the project I'm working on now, but am finding myself antsy to be done with it so that I can get right to the oils!

You've been really helpful.

Oils
 

Hi and welcome,

I've also changed to oil from an acrylic based fabric paint. Oil has a warmth that acrylic can't touch, you'll love it. There is a wealth of info here on paint, mediums, care and cleaning of brushes, just keep reading till your eyes fall out!

Jean

Hi Terri, it's nice to meet you. I have 9 year old twin daughters, so I understand EXACTLY what you meant about it being a little difficult with 'high spirited' kids around! I also have a small house and now a 2 month old baby boy. My art table is in a corner of the living room with all kinds of distractions. I work in graphite pencil, colored pencil, micron pen, pastels, and very often all of the above for mixed media pieces.

With children around, if I were you, I'd stay away from the oil paints and turpenoid etc because of health risks to the family, unless you can find a new well ventilated area in which to work. Obviously at 8 and 9 years old, there's less risk of them ingesting the chemicals, but the chemicals in the air are what I'm referring to as risk factors.

Someone mentioned Winsor & Newton, and they do make very good water-soluble oil paints. They are a special new formulation. I think most portrait artists don't like to work in acrylic because acrylic dries so fast, and there's also a little bit of the opinion by many artists, whether they feel it consciously or unconsciously, that unless they are painting in oils, they don't feel like they are 'really' painting. I am open to all mediums for portraiture, have tried oils and it was fine but I didn't feel the connection I felt that I needed to have to create. Maybe I will someday.

Hi Darla!

Thanks - and nice to meet you too! (9 year-old twins and a baby, you do have your hands full!) I've taken over the spare bedroom for a studio so I am able to at least limit some of the hustle and bustle around my work, but ventilation is still a concern. For now, I'm sticking with the acrylics. I've got a couple of commissions for acrylic paintings - that helps! :) (And to be honest, I would need a fair amount of practice with oils and maybe some instruction in different oil mediums - in order to even feel competent! . . . so that's on hold for now.)

I usually like that the acrylics dry quickly - although I envy the luxury of blending wet on wet!

On the ventilation issue, you can use Gamsol odorless mineral spirits (which is a less dangerous and less odorous solvent than most) and put a tabletop fan in a window, facing out. That should take care of most of the ventilation issues.

I was taught to paint using acrylics, and I also used watercolor for a long time, but since I've moved to oils I would never switch back now. I love the rich, lush look that other media just don't have.

Hi Michele!

First, let me say that your work is absolutely beautiful - especially Ben and Samantha, Chloe, and Erika and Robbie! From the volume of work (all oils?) on your web-site, it looks as if you've been painting in oils for quite awhile now. I'm curious to know more of your experience with switching?

- what prompted the switch - customer demand?
- how did you go about learning how to handle the oils when you switched... did you take classes, just jump right in?
- how long did it take you to feel competent, confident enough to accept commissions once you switched to the oils? (and were you doing commissions in acrylics, or were the acrylics more just from when you were a student?)

I 'learned' to paint in oils, taking lessons from a local still-life/landscape artist at her studio starting when I was 9 and intermittently through high school. But as I read here on the Forum painters talking about technique, and all the variations of oils that are used as mediums, I think those early lessons were severely lacking. We just used the paints right out of the tubes - no medium at all! It was a little like pushing mud around on the canvas. So my memories of oil painting, (and those early paintings!) are less than impressive. But I hope if I learned proper technique, I'd have better luck with it now.

My husband is just mmmm... tolerating my decision to 'quit my day job' and paint... (college tuitions in the not-too-distant future!) and commissions coming in help to put his mind a little more at ease, I think. I'm concerned about how much down-time it would take for me to really learn to use oils effectively. And though I think this is a switch I will want to make at some point, I think timing will be key. :)

So, anyway,... I've digressed into rambling! Any insights on your experience transitioning to oils would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Terri

I think you'll find the transition to oils to be easier than you might think. I had never done a portrait in oils (only pastel) until two and a half years ago and, yes, all the work on my site is in oils.

To be honest, I decided to learn oils because of customer demand. It takes me the same amount of work to create a portrait in oils as it does in any other medium, and they command much higher prices, in general. I also love the look of oil paintings and the buttery feel of the paint on the brush as I work.

I taught myself how to use oils, mostly by reading the posts on this site. Working with the paints straight out of the tube, as you did, is fine, assuming you use the better brands. (You might want to try Gamblin brand as a good place to start.)

If you want to thin the paints, try a mixture of 50% odorless mineral spirits (Gamsol) and linseed oil, but don't thin them too much. As you add more layers, put in more linseed and less mineral spirits. There are as many opinions as to what medium to use and how to use it as there are artists, but with that basic formula you'll be off to a good start.

That's about all you need to know to make the switch. Just jump right in!

Hi Michele!

-- and thanks for the encouragement! I'm trying to keep my schedule clear between Thanksgiving and Christmas so that I can try the oils then.

Will let you know how it goes!