Details - Charles Sovek palette at work

Here is a detailed shot of Charles' palette after completing another gem. Again messy, but who cares when you can paint like him?! Notice the group of small round containers in the upper right of the picture. This was a little setup he developed for use in his plein air work. The back-most container contains corn oil. Yep, corn oil. He uses this to clean his brushes by swishing them a few times in the oil and wiping thoroughly on rags. Cool. Next, two small containers: one with pure stand oil and another with a 50:50 mixture of turpentine and stand oil. These are used as his medium to mix with the paint to add luster and thin the paint. The last, front-most container contains pure turpentine that he uses in the initial lay in. To the right (almost out of the picture frame) hanging off the easel was his mixture of titanium white and the stand oil/turp mixture. He mixes this up until it has the consistency of mayo or yogurt. He then uses this white when he wants to lighen a value, or add highlights. Further down the right is a razorblade glass scraper he uses to clean the palette of dirty/unwanted color. His palette itself is made of plexiglass to save on weight. In the front is an old Spam can (cute touch!) to keep dirty rags, towels and paint scrapings.

Well, that's it for the ws pictures. It was tons of fun, I learned a lot of great tips and lessons that I have put into use in my work. It is so sad that we lost this great master artist, but I am very happy his work lives on in the many people he taught over the years and through his fine books.