Grumble, Grumble, Grumble

This weekend has been frustrating!  I feel like grousing, grumbling, and whining.  I want to / need to work on still lifes and have the following issues:

• The dental floss used to make a grid in my homemade view finders gets loose very easily. 
• It's hard to hold a viewfinder in one place.
• The light in my basement is too harsh.  
• The surfaces in the basement make it hard to set up a still life.  

On Saturday, I started a painting, got into a snit, stopped, and gessoed over the surface before I even finished.  After that, I did a short drawing exercise from the book "Drawing For the Absolute And Utter Beginner".  

Today, I tried to paint on the front porch where there is east and south exposure.  It seemed like the light would work mid-afternoon, but there was not enough to cast shadows that were distinct. The problem is that I need things to be perfect with contrast, values, light, shadows, and so on.  As a beginner, it helps if all of these elements are obvious, approachable, and easy.  After awhile, I can start to see things better and can branch out a bit from the perfect set-up.  This happened with painting from pictures.  I will not hold myself out as an expert in this area, but I figured out a few things that really helped me.  Also with painting from pictures, the lighting in my basement work area became much less of an issue.  

Light is so important.  I really have trouble seeing the values if the light is poor.  I don't know what type of lighting to add to my painting/crafting corner in the basement.  Since the ceilings are low in the basement, I'm going to try and find something with diffused light, which can be dimmed.   

Here's today's painting.  

It was fun having the cup go off the edge.  When I went back to look at this painting, I was much more pleased with the spoon than when I first looked at it.  I really need to remember to walk away from any finished painting.  One of the quotes from the drawing book mentioned above is "viewing distance is different from what you see at doing distance".  I almost never like anything that I've painted at the exact moment that I complete it.    

Also, everyone has a tough inner critic.  Yesterday, I was at a graduation party.  A lovely man was walking some kids through a drawing exercise while he was telling them a story.  The drawing was broken down into a number of easy steps.  He apparently does this at the State Fair and at other locations.  He did this with several groups of kids.  The last time, there was only one child participating.  This child did a good job, but he was clearly disappointed that his drawing was not exactly like the adults and he was critical of his effort.  I told him that I thought his drawing looked good and suggested that he look at it again once he got home. Hopefully, he will be less hard on himself if he looks at it later. 

The next two days are busy.  I may try to work on line drawing.  The exercises in Chapter 2 of my drawing book seem useful. 

Last thought about all of this......a frustrating day of painting is better than no painting at all.