Onward And Upward

Okay, so I got sick of the girl in the window - way too little - I don't have enough teeny tiny brushes to get the details and so I got frustrated.

Yesterday was, by far, the worst day I have had with my art so far. I just lost all confidence - it seemed that everything I did made it worse.

I don't like little canvases with tons of details.

I am so enjoying the scavenger hunt series on wetcanvas - it is helping me to free up and I also have grown confident in my drawing skills.

One of the items is a stained glass church window and so I went to a charming little town to sketch one of their beautiful windows - they were having a bar-b-que and so I had to leave - I did take some pictures to try my hand later.

One of the items on the scavenger hunt was fruit - cut and whole.

I have some beautiful apples, bananas, lemons and grapes but decided on the green apples.

It was my first time setting up my own still life and because I KNOW how important light is, I wanted to capture the pose to make sure I was on the right track.

This is what I decided on:



I blocked it out and because the cut apple was turning brown at an alarming rate, I was left with having to use my photo as a reference for the cut part:

I wanted an interesting tablecloth and preferably complimentary colors:


I wanted to block the dark tones and because the red reflections are going to be so important - I blocked in that

I tried to pick up medium tones - trying REALLY hard not to mix more than two colors because I HATE MUDDY COLORS!






Above I blended with a dry brush - short strokes - light touch - NO MUD!

I needed to trust my initial instincts for color. Real fine line for blending too much and making yucky colors.

I added the gorgeous Indian Yellow from danielsmith with white to get the cut apple bits.

This is how far I got after about 2 hours:




I cannot wait to get up tomorrow to work on the rest!