nahojis

I've changed now to oil painting on linen. Since I respect a safe drying time between layers, there is a break now in my uploads. Soon first work shall be finished. I had been painting oils for many years, before my digital period. Now I enjoy them again very much. I can't stand terpentine or any replacement, so I did came on Winsor&Newton water soluble oils. I'm very happy with it, but the colour palette is quite limited (and I only use cat. I ASTM). I'm a colour pigment maniac so I use many other colours too, mainly from Mussini,  my old tubes. Most of them are not made anymore, a lot is changed to other pigments (often with the same name), cat. II or with a different tone. But they have the best gold! So I also did buy Williamsbourg and Rublev colours. Those oils I combine with W&N and that goes well, even wet-in-wet. Cleaning is in water and often also with natural terpentine, but that I do outside! So no health problems because of that!

End of 2017 I quite suddenly wanted to paint again with pigments, with materials. Didn't know exactly why, during the darkest days of the year it is not quite logic. But for some time I got eye troubles and that is gone now. Reason enough for this change. I painted digitally for some years. Although I started with 3D constructions, I preferred the electronic drawing tablet at the end.

I don't want to evaluate digital painting or material painting, for me all these are just mediums: oil, watercolour, pastel, acrylic, digital... I don't believe in superior mediums, a pencil drawing or digital painting can be as good as an oil.

I stopped to paint with oil years ago because I got sick from the damps of terpentine. Shame, I did like the oil smell a lot. It got worse since it became very difficult to obtain natural terpentine. The synthetic version is very bad, really poisonous to me. Another disaster was the disappearence of my favorite colour, lead white, I used a lot of it and loved it, and never fell unwell from it. Other whites are no replacement, they are so opaque. Zinc white is in between, but has proved to jump of the canvas after years. I also got annoyed by the intensive cleaning after oil painting and I do not have a separate room or studio for oil painting. Since I did work with mussini without drying additions I had to whait for a month before I could start with the next layer. Finishing an oil painting took me a year so I did make several ones at the same time.

With digital painting I was so happy to have no cleaning nor whaiting anymore. But of coarse, computers also need a lot of care and time, and digital painting is shurely not cheaper compared to artist's paints, if you consider the cost of the computer and the programs.

Acrylic paint attracted me because of the iridescent and refracting colours, witch one cannot see on a computer screen. I also wanted to enjoy the pure pigments, their colour intensity is not the same as what radiates from the computer screen, although that has it's own attraction. Moreover I wanted to have something new of my own to hang on the walls without having to let my work be printed. (But the advantage of digital painting is that one does not make stacks...) Half transparent white in acrylics is possible by mixing titanium white with gel.

I didn't intend to quit with digital painting, but the acrylics turned to be a very difficult medium so I need to go on with it every day. I did choose for Old Holland colours and not to use drying retarders. The iridescent and refracting colours prooved to be a real challenge in the way I prefer to work, I have to watch the result from different points of view all the time while painting. Acrylics prove to be very transparant so I work in several layers, each time repainting the work. So it takes quite some time, but it is far more meditating and relaxing at the same time. The biggest challenge is the quick drying time, which still makes me longing for oils! But the advantage is that I can paint on the same canvas for nearly everyday! Far better for seeing it evolving and growing and holding the concept.

About 3000 years ago somebody wrote in the Mahabharata: "nothing is on itself fully good or fully bad". It surely suits internet. A great advantage of the internet is artists and art lovers can exchange their favourites.
All art lovers admire the ancient paintings and a lot of the moderns, mainly from prehistoric cave paintings up to abstract painting. For what follows then, a lot of people have very fragment ideas. They all know pop-art and the cans putted in the museum. But they have little idea of other evolutions such as hyperrealism or fantastic art. The rubbish now largely filling our museums of contemporary art makes us blind for the creation of beauty today. I hear it all too often, seeing for example wonderful ancient frescos in churches, when people say: "unbelievable how people could make that in those times, now they cannot anymore". Understandable, but absolutely not true. It's thanks to internet and certain sites, such as Deviantart, I discovered never before has been painted so much beauty as today. Styles are so varied, the originality often astonishing, the possibilities seem endless. Enough everyone can choose what he or she likes most.
To me beauty is an important item. Not everyone choose for beauty, some prefer drama, fights, monsters, the frightening. I'm not a fan of horror, there is already enough horror and violence in the world, we only have to look at the daily news.  
Strange enough a lot of artists did not find they're way to the internet. Some people belittle art made by means of the computer. But what's the difference? Some use oil or watercolour, others the electronic palette. It's also hand made. Even if one use a 3D or fractal program, one always needs the capacity to build good compositions, to colour sensitiveness, the capacity to imagine all kind of forms, to transform ideas into the concrete. In other words, those artists also must be able to draw and paint by hand as well.
I feel a lot of gratitude to be able to enjoy good work, thanks to all those artists and sites showing it. I also enjoy being able to show you my work, and the possibility to communicate about it. I realise not everybody has the same needs, but I'm sure to a lot of people the need of seeing art, or of making art, is much larger then they realise.

Many thanks for all reactions! It seemed I was a bit paranoia after all. To login doesn't seem a problem anymore, it was temporary. To submit my new work I was given the best advice by Lemmy-X from World-Imaginary. Instead of clicking the submit button, chose gallery, then click the right folder, then click + submit to this. It works with most groups.

Since a few months I could not submit a new work of mine at some of my favourite groups because the button "submitting to" does not appear anymore. Now it has grown worse: with all other groups the button "submitting to" appears, but I cannot chose a category anymore. I did ask submitting by some mails and I did write to the help desk. I suspect others have a similar problem? If not, I begin to become paranoia: is there anyone who is destroying my login? In that case, why? A message to me would be much more effective then a criminal activity. But I hope it's only a bug... It becomes serious, I begin to have troubles to login. If I cannot login anymore into Deviantart, I cannot send a help-message too. That's why I do it now. Perhaps it's the last day I can login into Deviantart. Bad times!