Nest

I've only relatively recently returned to painting with oils. What I love about this restart is that it feels like I'm starting from scratch again, and approaching the medium anew - experimenting and learning as I go. I've discovered that some of my most enjoyable paintings to paint are the ones that I've executed quite quickly; starting and finishing them in the same day (sometimes over a period of a few short hours). This approach, which negates any over-thinking, seems to give the work something of a sense of immediacy. Often, the first instinctive brush stroke is the right one; one that looks natural and unconsidered. One of the problems of going back to an area of painting and reworking it is that your one brain can sometimes get in the way and you end up painting something that looks over-considered, and you lose that perfectly balanced sense of randomness or imperfection.

'Nest', 2023, oil on board, by Wayne Chisnall

This piece, Nest, was painted over a few hours one evening and is made using charcoal and oil paint. I think that I tend to draw with oil paint as much as I paint with it, so I consider most of my oil paintings to be oil sketches. In the days that followed the painting of this piece, I would keep returning to it, looking at areas that I could build up - adding highlights, darkening areas of shadow, add detail, etc. I could see potential for more fully formed painting, but I resisted. Many of the paintings I prefer are ones where the artist has stopped a little short of completion - ones where the workings out and heavy brush strokes are still evident.

I also use charcoal in a very heavy-handed way, rather than in a more traditional way with its subtle blending and shading. I'll use the charcoal at the same point as I use the paint (rather than the standard way of just using the charcoal to do an under-drawing, seal it, then paint over it), drawing over and through the oil paint, and sometimes painting back over it. 

As I said, my use of charcoal is quite heavy-handed, and the sticks of charcoal often snap in my handed when I'm drawing with them. However, I like the fragments of charcoal that burst across the painting when this happens and I usually keep the pieces in it. The only issue I have with this is that if I then want to varnish the painting I'm going to have to find a way seal the charcoal first. Traditionally I'd spray it with fixative, as I would when drawing in charcoal on paper, but first I'll have to look into how the fixative might react with the oil paint, and if varnish can then be applied over the fixative. But that's a problem for future Wayne - man I don't envy that guy.