Practice Makes ???

Tomorrow is the second painting class. I've been practicing. Since work is busy, I haven't had the time I'd like, which is both good and bad. It's probably good, since it means I just have to move along, try new things, and not fret. It's also making me draw more quickly, so I don't have time for accuracy or details. The bad part is that I'm way outside my comfort zone.

Earlier this week, I painted a pepper.

#273 - Pepper - 8" x 8" - paper

 I am finding it challenging to mix the paint with the medium. I probably need to go darker with it all, since it's hard to get light lights. Overall, this painting seemed very sloppy to me, so I took several additional minutes to try and focus on the stem. From there, I tried to build the shapes that came up to the stem. I did this in a very small area below the painting, so it's probably on 1" x 1.5".

Focusing on a very small part felt more doable. 

Tonight, I took the time to do 2 paintings. I rather like how the scissors turned out, especially since the underlying drawing was really rough. Also, it felt like I was painting the values and shapes rather than trying to paint scissors. I did give myself a break and used pencil to draw rather than charcoal. 

#274 - Still Life Practice - 5" x 7" - paper

For the second painting, I used diluted matte medium on the paper before I painted. It suddenly occurred to me that the instructor did this (or at least I think he did - - this is one of my questions for tomorrow's class). Some of my challenges might be from painting on "raw" paper. I was tired, so I did this one fairly slap-dash. 

#275 - Mug - 5" x 7" - paper