Woodgrain View

I love this, looks great. If you look in the menu and then article section of this site there's some excellent advise regarding mountains and how to get the paint to break. Definitely worth a read. For what it's worth, I think your mountains are excellent 😁

Ben, that oil dripping is not abnormal, happens with most new tubes. A trick I use is that I put the first dot on a paper towel when I try a brand new tube. Could also happen to second and third dot, then simply inspect first before you put it on your palette and if necessary, place the oiled dot on paper towel first.
Good luck!

Concerning contact paper, specially with older ones you can have troubles since they don't stick that well anymore. I use paper glue then and that helps (for most of it). A trick you can use is to never paint directly into the paper's edge. If you paint away from it, or alongside, you should be free of bleeders. It's a habit but worth to try!

Here's something that might surprise you. You see my painting of Full Moon, I didn't use a cutout for that. I drew around a dinner plate with an ordinary pencil. To start creating the dark background I carefully painted outside the circle with black gesso on a quarter inch flat without going over the line and I never imagined it would be so easy. Then I just waited for the black gesso to dry leaving a nice clean white circle as the base for the moon. Then continued with oil paint. So I would say that sometimes you don't actually need to use contact paper. Worth a try if you have a steady hand.

thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and support. hope painting 3 is better

I think yours is fabulous!

thanks, all your paintings are excellent. I see you did some Kevin Hill's, I have done 2 of his the latest is a seascape, so far a mess, last night did some plastic surgery and will see what can be done with it when i get home from work today. By the way is your last name Bowling or are you a bowler?