Journal to a Muse

Painter's Progress

These oil paints are WAY more of a challenge than I expected. (Everyone always said watercolor was hardest... and I've done those though not especially well!)
Clearly, I was overly confident due to the ease of working with colored pencils. Everybody can make a pencil "work" right? even the watercolor ones only have so many surprises up their little graphite sleeves.

The oil paints don't blend on the canvas the way I expect. They don't mix with each other and/or the medium the way I expect. And apparently I sometimes have a colicky hand that moves in an entirely wrong direction. Ack.

Oh, and apparently I have gorilla hands that twist the caps back onto the tubes with such force that the caps pop. I'm going to have to see if one can buy just lids... or if I'll need to use vaseline and cling wrap.... or what.


But I am very happy having put in the effort. (Notice that this isn't exactly the same as being happy with the results!). None of these is "finished".... but then, they are for practice.

This is based on my sketch of Bunker Hill (Boston, MA) from the dock of Old Ironsides. Just be glad it ONLY looks as phallic as this... it was much more so before some crucial adjustments. From where I was sitting it was peeking up behind lots of trees, but dwarfed by clouds. I'll work on the clouds tomorrow so they don't look so much like fried eggs.

Yeah, you've seen this before... but THIS isn't photoshopped! There's now a lemon and an orange (must be a clementine because it's so small, don't you think?) and a tomato and what are supposed to be cherries. EVERYBODY thinks they are grapes. I actually went on line and looked at a bunch of photos and paintings of cherries and while I'm not sure I can fix this, I understand the confusion.
Here's my study on cherries (THERE ARE NONE IN THE MARKETS ANY MORE. Boo hoo.) They needed to be redder and "smoother" than the ones above. Which means the highlights are more distinct. Of course there isn't really any "point" to this painting... AND they could be candy apples or something. I need something else to indicate the scale of them... since apparently I can't capture the Artistotelian "Cherry-ness" of those fruits.