Painting 53

 

After the workshop, I returned to the studio and continued to concentrate on the small paintings. I wanted to do one that I could spend more time on and not do it in just one sitting. So as you can see, the blending is back. The quality that I liked so much with the lemon is gone. I didn't see how I could capture all the details of the plate and tablecloth design and be loose at the same time. I like the tomatoes and the plate, but I think the pattern of the tablecloth competes with the focal point. I also don't like the vantage point. Looking directly down on the subject matter seems a little unconventional to me, or maybe I'm just over-thinking it. Overall, there are things I like about this painting, but there's something that just doesn't feel right. Did I get more value by spending more time on it? Not sure that I did.

Painting 41

I think I write too much on my blog. Sometimes there's not much to say about a painting, but then I stretch it out and I end up with paragraphs of text when the focus of the blog is merely to show my painting progress. From 1 to 100 and what happens in between. I really don't like to write and I'm not remotely good at it, but I do like to reflect on my paintings. Since I'm months, if not a year behind in my blog, the paintings I show now are old to me, and the amount of time in between allows me to see things differently. The gift of time allows me to be a bit more detached and therefore I can be critical and see  more than if I were writing about something that was just completed. So I continue on, already more wordy than I intended. Philosophizing and psycho-babbling, throw in an art critic and that sums up my blog.

So let’s talk about the tomatoes, another Alla Prima, finished in one sitting. They were purchased from the convenient Farmer's market, or they were found in the refrigerator, I don't recall. Trite composition, still a little too flat with the shadow too vibrant a hue, I believe there's glare on the photo which is causing some of my concern with the tones, but Carol Marine said this in her work shop I attended after painting this, she said "beginning artist always make the highlights too big" or something to that affect. I certainly agree with her here. I like the visible brushwork and there's no mistaking them for tomatoes. That's the positive. I didn't like the background, so I did repaint it a turquoise-ish blue a few months later, but it didn't seem to help much. In the end, not something I would attach a buy now button to.

I don't paint that great a lot of times, just like I don't write that great. Perhaps you may think I'm too hard on myself, but I find comfort in being critical because I feel I've learned something when I spot the errors now. My wish is to be able to see even more things wrong when I view this again. So being critical makes me happy because I am present to the fact that I’m learning and I growing which is, to quote Martha Stewart, a very good thing. Unfortunately for the 2 people who follow this blog, writing is also a part of that process.