A Painting A Day

I was worried I might not have time to paint today. So glad I made it! Yesterdays pears came to an untimely demise. The canvas literally snapped in half! I tried to put it back together, but it just wasn't going to happen. So my lovely little painting is going to decorate a landfill somewhere. :( I am using really cheap canvas boards so I guess when I run out of these I might spend a little more than .47 per canvas. Ha! I could use some better brushes too. I guess now that I am getting serious about it, I should invest in good materials. So since my pears from yesterday are gone, I had to revisit the subject. I tried again, and this time I finally got around to putting something other than white under my glass sheet that I use for a palette. The color is an off white. I do think it helped me when mixing to have a different color under the glass. Tomorrow is color class! So excited! One thing that's funny is that every single one of these paintings I've done lately is on the same black countertop... and looking at the paintings not one of them has the same color background! I imagine it would be boring to have the same background on every painting, but I would much rather it be intentional!

I can't seem to take a good photo of my painting today. It's raining outside, so going outside to take the picture is out of the question. Everywhere I put it - or put the light on it - I get a glare. I will have to research how to take better pictures. The pear shapes were a challenge for me today. I never did get them right. On the bright side, I had an epiphany about my painting. In the past, I've used waaaay too much mineral spirits while painting. Doing that washes my paintings out. Today I think I dipped the brush in the thinner maybe two times and just a little dab when I did. It seems like ultramarine is always sticky and needs a little help to move on the brush. My thinner was clean at the end of the session. In the past it's always been muddy because I was cleaning my brush during painting. Now instead of doing that I am trying to use the light and the dark brush - and wipe them with a paper towel between colors. It's amazing how much it can help to change one seemingly unimportant thing while painting. I am proud of myself. It's now been 9 days straight of painting each day! But I'm running out of room! All these wet paintings are taking up a lot of space in the garage!