No pictures today, this is just a waffle post!
I have learned some valuable lessons this week, the first being to stop whinging and whining about how frustrated I am at learning to paint. Someone pointed out that this is meant to be an enjoyable process not a painful one with no end it site ...how very true! New attitude in place I set about the painting again and POW! two things "clicked" into place.
1) I had spent so much time trying to learn where to put the brush and what colours to use that I had forgotten the most important part ...how to see ...how to look. I think it was the whole colour thing, the way colour still confuses me a little (not a whinge a fact!) I had completely forgotten to look at values ...switch that imaginary switch in my head to looking at things in greyscale. Ta da!!! So if I put this tome here and this tone here it suddenly looks 100 times better.
2) One this painting I had been putting quite thick paint onto the canvas and then over laying each area with lots of different variations of that colour as thought I saw them. It was effective and quite beautiful when looking at the painting closely but any effect was lost when viewed from a distance (but then some of that was due to the tone thing) Then by mistake I learnt that if I had a tiny ammount of paint on my brush and gentle feathered it over the area I wanted to paint it gave a lovely subtle effect of that colur while still allowing what was underneath to come through. Ta Da once more!!! This is becoming much clearer and fathomable.
With this new information in place I set about tackling the horse muzzle and finished it! Wont post a piccie until it's finished now though.
It's now Saturday morning and both Nick and I have the whole weekend off to spend time with the girls, these times are precious so painting time will be kept to a minimum. Next week I will press on and try and finish this one though as the end of the month and total chaos inexorably draws closer I know that there will be 2 months when time for art will be non existent.
