basket of apples

Basket of Apples

So I have been so upset with myself because I haven't been committing to my one painting a day.  I was busy for a few days and then felt a little under the weather.  On Monday I thought I'm going to paint no matter what.  So, I ended up going for my daily hike, then planted my garden seeds, and by that tine it was already getting late in the day.  Then, before starting a new painting,  I decided to try to fix a few of my previous paintings.  A fly had landed on my wet yellow onions  painting and walked all around it making marks until it finally ended up  getting stuck in the shadow.  I spent about an hour trying to fix it and adjust the shadow until I ended up having  a complete mess and just threw it away. Argh!    Then, I thought I'll 'fix' my orange painting too.  I wanted to infuse a little more color into the orange slices and cool down the shadow.  I started by covering the whole thing with linseed, and then the colors flowed and blended a little better than trying to do it on a dry canvas like I did with the onions.  It turned out just okay, and at least I didn't make it any worse.   By that time I was already starting to get a headache, but forced myself to paint something.  I grabbed a miniature basket of miniature plastic apples and and thought I'll just go for it.  It was much too complex a painting to start the way I was feeling and I definitely wasn't in the mood.  I just rushed through it to get it done because by the end I had a full blown headache.  It looks extremely amateur, but I'm posting it anyway because I said would post everything.  I could probably go in and fix it, but I think I'll just move on.

I've decided that still life just doesn't excite me.  Soooo, why am I putting off learning to be a landscape painter when that's what I REALLY want to do?  So, my new plan is to only paint Mon - Thurs so I don't get burned out.  I'll take landscape reference photos on the weekends.  We'll see how that goes....

In the meantime found a wonderful landscape painter that I would love to emulate;  Andy Dolphin.  He has quite a few great videos on You Tube.   Here's a link to his blog;

myweekinart.blogspot.com