Another painting done and I enjoyed this one more.

I drew it out first, but found that frustrating. I had a lunch date and had to rush off after I finished it, thinking I’d photograph my still life set up later to post. And then I ate the grapes as I was running out the door. Of course they looked JUST LIKE in my painting. I started with a grey panel and I liked the experience of that. I’m getting a little annoyed with having to fill the whole background in; it feels uneccessary, so I prepped some panels to provide different background options. They’ll need a few coats of gesso before they’re ready, but we’ll see how that turns out. Could be good, could be a learning experience…

I have painted very little this year – I just haven’t felt like it. And I think that’s a pretty poor excuse. So now that I’m on vacation, I have decided to paint a small still life painting every day until I go back to work on August 1. I’m hoping this will motivate me to push through and just do the work. It may not be pretty, but I am determined.

This was difficult. I was tired and did not feel like doing it. But I don’t always feel like doing my daily drawing and I just do it anyway and I did the same thing here. I started by covering my 8″ x 10″ panel with a diluted layer of burnt sienna and then did a quick drawing of my subject with more dilute burnt sienna before wiping away the paint from the lightest parts of the image. From there I mixed a few colours and filled in some of the major pieces a bit roughly. Then I moved from area to area filling in details and adding tone. I don’t know that I have a really great process – I’m working on that concept yet – but it got me through this painting. I don’t love the result. I see some depth created with the apples and the bowl, but the background is really flat and weird. And you can see that I rushed at the end with the fabric that the bowl is sitting on. I included this bit of folded canvas because I like painting fabric, but I was just too tired. And that’s one painting done.