Art Chowder November | December 2017, Issue 12 | Page 10

Art Chowder: Do you work exclusively
with watercolors?
Andy: For twenty years I only did water-
colors. It’s my favorite medium. But I’ve
learned that watercolors don’t sell well in
certain areas, which is really frustrating.
Plus once you have a watercolor painted,
it is a nightmare to frame, show, and ship.
For years I dealt with it; made it work.
But about five years ago, I heard a little
voice inside say, “You need to start to oil
paint.” I didn’t want to. I said no to that
little voice for two years because oils
seemed boring to me, like there’s no ad-
venture there. Watercolor is an adventure.
You add water and watch it go! It paints
itself some of the time. It’s cool and it’s
fast. I figured you couldn’t do that with
oils. Oil is going to be boring. But that
little voice inside of me started scream-
ing. “You’ve got to oil paint. Get to oil
painting, blah, blah, blah.”
So I took some classes to learn the basics
of mixing colors. It was weird using
white paint. In watercolor you never use
white paint, it’s always the paper. I had to
go through this learning curve, about how
to use white oil paint, and what you can
do with a paintbrush on canvas that you
can’t do with watercolor.
There are techniques in watercolor that
I really love, like scratching or scoring
the paper: using an Exacto blade to pick
out highlights, like the hairs of a poppy
in the sun; scoring to create the hard lines
of a barn. After using and loving all these
techniques, I wondered…how am I going
to make the hairs on a poppy using oil?
You mean I have to actually paint them?
What a pain! So I’m still learning, and
exploring with oils.
What I like about oil painting is that you
can go bigger! It’s much easier to do big
paintings. They are lighter, and easier to
ship, or haul around. Now the only issue I
run into is, how big is my truck?
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
"Palouse Country Summer"
24 x 40” - Oil on canvas
Art Chowder: Nice! So are you using more oils than watercolors now?
Andy: I wouldn’t say more. Probably, more real estate is being covered in oil right
now, but I still do lots of little watercolors. I don’t paint big watercolors anymore
unless I know someone wants it, and that it’ll go from my studio to their house. But
big oil paintings? They’re just easier.