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 Very Productive Saturday!

For the first time in a long time, I had a free Saturday.  I must have painted for about 8 hours overall (not without interruption, of course). 

I feel like I've spent a lot of time in the first two panels - especially because there were so many complicated issues on the tractor, the figure in the tractor, and the plow that hadn't been resolved.  However, there are a lot of details on these panels that I have yet to do, and they won't happen until the very end.  One of the last things I'll have to do is to get some of these panels exactly side by side with no gaps to make sure things line up. But, for now, I just measure where I can and "eyeball" it when I can't.

I started today by working on the pumpkins again, adjusting some of the shadows and highlights a little.  Then, I moved on to the wave of soil - a larger area of color to troubleshoot and blend.  Once you start working on an area like that, you don't want to stop - gotta keep blending before the paint dries.  And, working on this part took me back into panel #3 again.

Then, I moved on to the cauliflower.  I didn't like the highlight color I had used for the vegetable's leaves in the first layer - too blue.  So, I mixed a bit more yellow in and that worked better.  I also worked on the cauliflower itself, stippling with and a light purple for shading.  There's still detailing to be done or adjusted there.

The last thing I did was to "plant some crops" in the far field.  That took a little extra time because I tried a few different greens before I found something I liked.

I love seeing how everything is starting to build, little by little.