I felt that yesterday’s painting was a bit of a disaster, so I decided to give it a second shot – and make it just as fussy and smooth as I originally wanted it to be.  I definitely like this one a LOT more, but it took wa-a-ay too much time to complete.  If I’m going to keep up the Challenge, I’ll have to develop a faster working method!

What I’m happy with:

• You want the honest truth?  I’m happy with almost all of it!   I tried really hard not to  stray too far from the reference image, and I think it came out alright!

What I’m less happy with:

• lack of unified paint texture.  Sometimes I gooped it on and it looks opaque, sometimes it looks watercolour-y.  It’s the mark of an amateur, so… gotta work on that.

What I learned with this painting:

• too much Titanium White can tip a painting’s flesh tones over into “zombie” territory pretty quickly.  Proceed with caution!
• as much as I enjoy working with a painting propped up in my lap, all that sitting allows me to forget to take a step back every now and then, and that is dangerous!

My Interior Monologue While Painting – a play in three acts:

me: Ok!  Enough of this stylistic garbage!  I’m going to paint the way I want to paint and prove to myself that I can DO THIS!  [begins painting]

me (halfway through): Oh God!  This is terrible!  I can’t paint AT ALL! [keeps painting]

me (holding my precious new bundle of painting joy):  Hunh.  That wasn’t so bad.  Ok, maybe I *can* do this after all.  In fact, I’m going to do it all again tomorrow!! [promptly forgets all about painting woes until the next day]

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