Today I decided to divert from my little studies and do a winter scene that really appealed to me. I love the little bit of sun peaking through the trees. I did try to work loosely on this and felt like I had some success not being too fussy.
Can you guess which of these took 15-20 minutes, and which one took almost a full day? Well, I wanted to do this to prove that a painting can be done quickly and effectively. In this I wanted to capture the essence of the scene; like the light vs. darks and the general layout, and perhaps notes of color. The larger one took most of a day. It really is not that much more detailed than the other. They both capture the scene. I could work on the smaller one more, but this is all I needed it to tell me right now. I think this is a very valuable skill to learn well. I will be doing much more of this quickk study to see what I can do with it. I would not consider the larger one a complete painting, but I was at a point of overworking it and decided I had messed with it enough. I will try it again another day.
Well after scraping off several attempts at painting pears with fewer and more deliberate brush strokes, I think I finally had some progress and success. In this group I decided to begin with a black and white to help me determine the values that I was struggling with. This seemed to help out quite a bit in the long run. The first 4 of these only took me about 10-15 minutes each. That is my goal with these quick studies. The last one I played with a bit longer. I want to do this same sort of study with another subject. It has been very helpful.
My objective in t
his study, was to get to the point where I could put down brush strokes with confidence. I did not want to overwork these things. My first 4 were horrible. They took me about 1 hour each and I’m not even sure that at that point they looked enough like pears to suit me. I actually scraped off the next several attempts. Ugh!
These are my first attempts at painting a white coffee cup. One of the exercises in The Daily Painting book, suggested doing 4 paintings that consisted of a cup and a couple different pieces of colored papers. These each took about an hour a piece and I tried not to be too fussy or to go back over them after my time was up. Overall I think there is progress. So I’m going to call it good!
Art with my Coffee 