A question I often get asked when I’m plein air painting is….”How long did that take you”?
I have always tried to answer this accurately, but to be honest it is really difficult to say a time. For one thing, the painting often has to be set aside to dry. That can take up to 2 weeks in the Summer. The atmosphere is dryer and warmer, hence the oil paint dries quickly. However, the Autumn and Winter are very different. I could be looking at 6 to 8 weeks for a textured painting to dry.
When I have a textured piece, it is better to complete it in one session. That isn’t always possible though. As with this painting. It ‘might’ be finished as you see it, but until it is dry and I look at it again, I won’t know.
This gets me back to the question…”How long did that take you”? If I included the drying time, a painting could end up taking 3 to 6 months.
I used mostly palette knives for this painting and the actual painting time was 2 to 3 hours. There was a lot of colour mixing involved.