Daily Painting 05/15/16 to 05/18/16

Most days, I work on a painting, but don't finish one even though most paintings are only 6 inches square.  If I could speed up, I think it would help with having things look a little fresher and looser, but I'm not to that point.

Here are a couple of paintings that I finished in the last couple of days.  The water lilies were painted from a tracing.  This one is 8" x 8".  I'm going to keep working on water lilies.  I love them!  This painting looks best at medium distance.  Up close, the paint strokes with the flower don't look so hot. Far away, the individual leaves disappear a bit, so I think I could have used a tiny bit more of contrast/value in the greens.  When I make these comments, my aim is to be constructive to myself, rather than critical.  I'm mostly amazed that the things that I paint look mostly look like I intend!!

The pansy was drawn from this picture.  It was fun to draw something where you don't have to be as exact.  Even so, I divided the picture up into 4 equal parts on the vertical and horizontal axis.  I really need my lines.

It's the first time that I've tried a flower "close-up".  It's on 5" x 7" paper.