Well, I’m pretty much done except for the sitting with it to see if it needs some more tweaking. I don’t sign my paintings until I’ve sat with it for a day or two.
I’m pretty happy with the results.
I’m thinking of naming it “Two by Two by Two”. Guess why. [Note to self: Do NOT call it that!]
Now I go into the planning of my next painting. It’s all FUN!
I seem to be able to paint a little faster these days. Plus, not having a day job helps!
Here’s my current progress.
You’ll notice that the “white” table cloth so far has not a spot of plain old white. There’s a mix here of blues, yellows, greens, off whites, purples etc. It’s just magic. I have always loved snow scenes where this amazing mix of colors say “snow”. If I were a landscape painter, I’d be doing snow scenes all the time.
I still do struggle though, and these mushrooms got wiped off in full before I finally trusted the process and kept on putting colors down in the hopes that they’d start looking like mushrooms eventually.
Here’s a closeup of what I see when I’m perched close to the canvas. You can imagine how one can only see a mess, and have doubts that one has got it right.
Getting the right colors can be a real challenge as well. Just look at all the different colors in that one mushroom. If you painted the whole thing just one or two colors or tones, it would never look like a real mushroom. One has to fight all the time with the mind that says something is green when it’s more grey and purple and many different tones to boot.
I’m working with the limited drawmixpaint palette, which really teaches you to see. When I started out, and before I found Mark Carder, I had tubes of just about every color there is – well at least twenty or so. Because I wasn’t able at first to really see the color properly, I wasted so much paint mixing and mixing trying to get what I thought I saw. [Anyone want a lot of oil paints? (Mostly Windsor&Newton artist’s oils.) Let me know! I’ll give you a good deal.]
I should be done in a day or two.
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Last night I awoke at 2: am. It’s not unusual for me to awaken and read for an hour or so and then go back to sleep. But last night I felt completely ready to get up. I kept thinking about painting – testing the waters to see if I really was ready to start the day. In the end, I took my new puppy out and then read. I turned out the light around 3:00 and lay there thinking about getting up. And though I did not feel as if I’d fallen asleep, when I next looked at my watch it was 5:00. YAY! I can get up. So silly to be ruled by the clock and conditioned habits. But I did not want to end up being too tired to paint.
Once the cats, dog, and chickens, and I were fed, I headed into my workroom – so happy to be painting again.
I spent almost the whole day on the brussel sprouts and basket. I do take breaks, but not many today – two short and one decent length to get out with the dog while we have a warming spell here in New Hampshire.
These sprouts were a challenge. They looked so bad while I was painting them – up close, just random blotches of color. But now that they are pretty much done, I think the magic works pretty well.
The color in the photo is a bit off, and I have to take the shot at an angle due to glare. But…you get the idea.
Moving right along. I am so enjoying being back to painting. Here’s my progress so far. I’m getting to the stage where I begin to be impatient to see it all done. Not because I’m not enjoying the process, but because I feel this may end up being one of my favorites.
I can breath again. I’m pretty sure I’ll need to tone this down, but aside from touch ups, I think I’ve got the greenery well enough to progress to the rest of the painting. I’m not sure if I like this, but I can’t think of any other way I could paint this greenery without making a total mess of it.
So…I’ll post my progress so far.
With respect to loose painting, a commenter remarked that she had loosened up with by completing a 30 paintings in 30 days challenge.
I might just try that. It would be interesting to see the results. Probably nothing I will feel comfortable posting here LOL!
Still Making Art 