So Much For Being "Done"...

A rare day-off for Lincoln's Birthday, the big kids all gone to friends' houses, and a little sunshine on the front patio means that my littlest can have fun playing out front while mom updates things on the laptop.

Spring flowers have already arrived.

Anyway, didn't I say I might just tweak the painting a little?  Well, that wasn't exactly true.  When it came down to it, I think I tweaked it a lot.  Of course, it may not look different but, with a little close observation, one might notice differences.  Frankly, I became frustrated with the 2 flowers on the right - they became rather muddled by overworking with to many colors - I even completely painted out the bottom one and started over.

I think it's done - but I'm still not happy with the leaf - I'll just tweak it a little...

Light was an interesting challenge as I had a changing light source (a south-facing window) to my left which caused moving shadows and a secondary interior light overhead/right which created shadows of its own.  I realized that I was giving conflicting information with cast shadows of the flower petals on both sides of the vase/creamer, but I liked the shapes and decided to keep them.  And that's what was truly liberating about this project compared with the first one which was much more dependent on observation.  For this one, I gave myself permission to use more artistic license and mostly responded to what was happening on the paper.  Besides liking the shapes of some of the shadows, I also liked the orange from the flowers reflected on the porcelain surface - it wasn't nearly as pronounced in real life, but I liked it in the painting.

I still have dreams of one do doing a "quick" little still life that captures its essence with a minimum of strokes... (sigh)

A Different Perspective...

On this lovely afternoon, I was able to spend time painting.  I realized that the little still life I just painted was OK, but...something about it isn't sitting well with me.  I'm happy to be more comfortable working with acrylic paint, but it's still falling flat.  That contrast that I like to emphasize just wasn't there once the colors dried.  Also, I wanted to try something a little looser now that I'd solved the question of colors and mixing.  So, I decided to try it again from a slightly different angle.

First paint (left) and today's painting (right)

I definitely like the 2nd one better - it has a greater level of contrast and it is slightly looser (although I think total reckless abandon just isn't how I was created to paint).  There's still a little tweaking that I'll do, but it shouldn't change too drastically from this.  One thing that I thought about while painting was how much easier color mixing has become.  In the early days of painting, color mixing was a little confusing - sort of hit or miss.  But now, I have a better sense of whether I should add a blue, a brown, or a black for a shadow; whether I should add a white, a yellow, an ochre, or some other color for a highlight.  I'm actually quite happy with my painting now - I want to have one foot in the natural world and one foot in the expressive without swinging too far one way or another...at least for now.

This doesn't exactly accurately represent the saturation of some of the colors, but it's close...

I've been watching some art programs on the Ovation channel lately and I had to pause one episode of Art in Progress to write down a quote.  The show focused on the artist Donald Sultan - I was not particularly familiar with his work and I liked it to some degree, although it was a bit to conceptual for my tastes (a topic for another time).  But, he said something that really struck a chord in me as I so often "overthink" things.

"One of the mainstays of making art is that you don't think of new ideas - you discover them.  So, that's why you have to work all the time.  If you go out and just lie around and start thinking and waiting, you know nothing is ever gonna happen.  And, the longer you wait, the more you realize that when you come back to it, you're right back where you were.  You're not any further along even though you thought and thought and thought - you didn't really go anywhere."  Donald Sultan

I appreciated this thought since I often like to spend time - too much time - thinking about what I want to do.  And, sometimes it's paralyzing.