My First Oil Painting In a Long, Long Time

Before I went on a long vacation (well, I don’t do the weekend thing, so this was my first vacation in 2022) I deviated a little bit from my iPad and worked on an oil painting. It was something new to me and I’ll tell you more about this painting today.

Painting with oil happened by accident as I had oil paint mixed up with my acrylic paint sets. It’s been a long time that I haven’t painted with a traditional medium that I actually forgot I bought some oil paint once.

So, instead of using acrylic as originally planned, I continued with oil as I was enjoying the texture that I could make with it.

It was a little bit of a challenging process and it left a great deal of mess in my workspace, it also kept me indoors most of the time— which reminded me why I prefer to work with digital, since I get to bring my iPad anywhere with me. I could create a digital art piece anytime, anywhere, even in unlikely places without taking loads of art materials along with me.

Here are more details of the piece.

Oil paint takes a long time to dry, thus patience is much needed when working with this material.

It’s probably also best to have a strategy where you paint on one side altogether and paint on the other while you wait for it to dry, versus painting the entire canvas by layer.

Anyway, whatever works, but I did need more wait time for the paint to dry.

It was great to learn how to use the medium again.

Here’s the full view of the piece:

The photo doesn’t do it justice, since it looks better in actual. I seriously love the texture and the feel of it.

 

TITLE + ABOUT THE PIECE

 

It used to have a different title, somewhat subtle, but also dramatic, I decided to make it straightforward as it’s what I really had in mind when I created it.

It’s now called, “TRAPPED.”

On the painting, you’ll see a big cat a tiger to be specific entangled in twigs and tree branches that she couldn’t move.

An irony, in a way, because she is a tiger and she can easily break this trap she got herself in. This is symbolic to situations where certain people don’t know what to do with— perhaps, it’s something new to them and they aren’t aware of themselves and their actions that might have a serious unpleasant effect to anyone they hide themselves from. A temporary state of paralysis happens. Instead of becoming their true selves, they turn into someone else, someone different, sometimes mean and ruthless. They trapped themselves in all these defenses to feel safe and they’re unable to move freely in certain settings, robbing themselves of true joy and freedom.

I used to be this kind of cat once.

This trap, however, could mean many different things to various individuals.

What’s the story you get from looking at the painting?

 

“TRAPPED”
Lhean Storm
Oil on Canvas
3ft x 3ft
2022

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