A few paintings

I have recently been playing around with oil paints again. I discovered something: I really hate canvas board as support. The paint just sinks right into it, making it almost impossible to blend or work wet-in-wet, and the brushes tend to pick up bits of fluff from the canvas, and then roll it around all over the place. What's more, the surface is murder on your brushes, because you have to scrub and scrub and scrub to get the paint worked into the surface.

So I returned to a support I have not used in a while: humble hardboard primed with a layer of acrylic. It seems to give better results: the paint flows onto the surface far more easily, showing the brush strokes (which is an effect I happen to like) and one can do some blending on the surface. On the negative side, the paintings do take longer to dry, and you have to work with extreme care when working wet-in-wet to prevent colours from turning into unsightly mud.

I may or may not try canvas board again. If I do I'll probably first put on a few layers of acrylic to properly seal it. For the meantime, a few small paintings (210 mm x 148 mm) in oil on board, all done from direct observation (as opposed to reference photos):

Rather frustratingly, I can get my photos to really capture the colours and light as they appear in the original, so these reproductions are less than accurate.