12. Just Peachy

Just Peachy 5x7 oil/linen

This was a fun little arrangement - mostly because I had three white objects.... the background, the creamer, and the cloth are all... WHITE!!!  Of course you all know you don't paint white things just white... (you DID know that, right?) and with all this white floating around,  I had to select a different color white for each thing.

the background is a pale purplish bluish white, the creamer is a warmer greenish white, and the cloth has a tiny bit of red in it.  

It was fun playing around with edges in this one.. I  realized all of a sudden all my brushes are getting worn out - it's sort of like your underwear and socks.. they all seem to go south at the same time.  I've been using rather large brushes on these little paintings too... using a big, fuzzy, worn out brush will sure keep you from getting bogged down in detail...... 

Catching up!

Waiting for Daddy 5x7 oil/linen

So, finally replaced the keyboard, but still waiting on the roofers to come and fix the leak.  Meanwhile, we have to keep the new keyboard off the desk in case the drips start again!

So, here's the next painting.  This was a fun experiment, but, lemme tell ya, it was NOT EASY!!!

First, working from a photograph is never really that good.. the colors and values are usually way off, but I wanted to try a difficult subject (and it doesn't get much harder than the portrait of a child) because the exercise was to only see pieces of color... no drawing, no trying to "paint a nose, or an eye, or a chin..".. I figured if I picked a hard subject, I'd be more likely to not slip into drawing mode. So, I just started by putting a few marks on the canvas to indicate where the top and bottom of the head would be, and started putting down pieces of color. I even blurred the photo on purpose so I'd see values and color, not details. It was a great exercise, and I'll do this again... to train my eyes to see value and color.. After all, we're not really painting "things" - we're painting  how the light affects things, and so if we can accurately judge value and color, we can paint any subject at all.....