My brother, artist, Lynn Burton, and I continue our conversation. This time Lynn took the lead.

Lynn: All right, why is it taking you so long to finish the painting you call the “Old Woodie?”

Richard: I do a lot of things that take up time. I do a lot of research for my blog. I blog. I write articles. I visit art galleries on the internet as well as visit galleries around town. I’m involved with art groups and I’d like to find some wannabe artists with talent and help promote them on my blog. Maybe do some interviews. The “Old Woodie”, is just something I come back to when I’m painting or drawing something else. I’m painting it for myself. It’ll probably be finished in a week or two.

Lynn: Now the main focus in the painting is Dad back in 1949 or 50, right.

Richard: Yeah.

Lynn: Now, you paint in watercolor and acrylics, right.

Richard: Yes, I haven’t tried oils, yet. I’m not really set up for oil painting. I don’t have a good place to work with them. But I really like acrylics. I can do water color style, wet in wet, and I can do it where it really looks like oil. For example, my painting, “Serenity in the Keys” has a look of oil painting. It’s hard to see in a photograph but I think you can see it when I snap a picture of a close up segment.

I don’t know if you can see it, but these do show brush strokes. With the different modeling techniques you can actually get all kinds of different textures in the paintings with acrylics. I didn’t really try to get anything but a feeling of oil paints here.

Of course, the flash of the camera makes it look like the sun is low in the middle of the painting. I learned a hard lesson. You have to photograph paintings before you put the varnish on them.

Lynn: Was your painting, “The Red Truck” in oil painting style?

Richard: Yes it was. If you feel the Close up building you’ll find that I put the stucco on with about a thousand pointillisim dots.

Lynn: I don’t think it’ll get to a museum. Seems like a lot of work.

Richard: You know me, I get something in my head and I have to do it that way.

Lynn: Are you doing the “Old Woodie” in oil painting style?

Richard: No. Actually, I’m trying to make it in more or less an egg tempera style. I’m using a 50:50 matte medium to paint mixture making it very thin and transparent. Then I over paint my work, building the color. After this I gently sand it with a 600 paper until the surface is real smooth. It seems to be coming along.

Lynn: All I can say is I’m going to have to teach you how to get loose and slap that paint around.

Richard: Oh, I can do that. It all depends on the subject and what I’m trying to accomplish.