Acrylics on panel. This took three hours and came out awful! What went wrong? Let me count the ways. Am not sure whether to try to fix it, or just move on.
Donna modeled for us today in drawing class. Her denim jacket, flowered long skirt, boots, and tough attitude made her look like a pioneer woman. This drawing sold! In charcoal and colored pencil on Kraft paper.
Dissatisfaction with Still Life with Roses prompted me to study the more abstract flower paintings of Gabriela Ibarra and some others. An article on Ibarra revealed that she uses collage in her compositions. That was a huge inspiration, so I incorporated collage into this still life. This isn't finished, but I like it enough to return to it and see if I can finish it without losing the fresh quality it currently has. Collage and acrylics on cardboard.
Below, yet another attempt to force myself out of my comfort zone and introduce more abstract or decorative elements into my painting. Yikes, what a mess! In gouache on canvas paper. That's part of the problem, actually--gouache is hard to paint over without reactivating the underlayers.
Have been admiring the paintings of Francois-Emile Barraud, an early 20th century painter with a lovely style--realistic but a bit stylized, with subdued colors and lots of grey. Yesterday was Easter, so no painting, but today I did this quick study of tulips, hoping to emulate Barraud. (No luck there.)
The "daily painting" exercise has been making me feel a little desperate. Today I sat down in the driveway and did these flowers with a sense of scaping the bottom of the subject barrel. But actually they turned out okay, I think.
