Today I have had a morning where my toddler lived up to everything toddlers are supposed to be. By which I mean, he drew all over the nice near-new beige couch in purple pencil, food is everywhere from the dining room to the lounge, toys are strewn everywhere and it took an hour to get down for the afternoon sleep. I also got some beautiful cuddles from him too which makes it all worth while. My boy is 19 months old and I also have a girl at 7 months old - I managed to have both within a year by 4 days which makes life interesting and busy.
So after this morning, and once they finally went to sleep (as they have only just started sharing a room which also makes life interesting!) I decided that I couldn't face the mess and that I needed to do something to de-stress me. So I decided that I would do one of the exercises for art school which is to paint a still life in a hour, firstly doing it dark to light and then secondly doing the same still life light to dark. I decided that I would paint peppers/capsicums (not an original still-life choice I now) but I really like the shapes and colours of them. Several days ago I set them up on a shaft of morning sunlight and took photos as I knew that I might not have the right light when I got a chance to paint them. So this is my dark to light exercise. I did manage to complete it within one hour. It is 400x200x35mm and is in oil painted wet-into-wet. I do want to go back when it is dry to touch up the white highlights as they kept on picking up the wet colours underneath. I'm not entirely happy with the green pepper at present but it had a lot of white highlights so hopefully that will resolve it once I do those. I haven't done the light to dark yet (and I am not really looking forward to that as I prefer dark to light with oils) but once I do I will post it here. And I get confused, are peppers and capsicums the same thing or is there some difference that I am not aware off. Please feel free to illuminate this for me if you can.
So my house is still a pigsty but the babies are due to wake any minute and I have managed to relax and actually get something done so I feel so much better!
I am still working on that other painting too but I'm feeling a bit stuck at the moment as I can't get the water right. I still need to finish glazing the sky and the houses etc need tidying up but I thought I would post a piccie here for interest sake. Just remember there is still heaps and heaps to go on this and it is still in that messy rough stage.
2 comments:
Peppers and capsicum are the same thing. I think the different terms used to be a UK/US thing but they seem to be used interchangeably these days. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_pepper
The paintings are looking good - how does the couch look!
Thanks Kate, for some reason I prefer "peppers". I'm just waiting for the munchkins to go to bed and then I am going to get some soapy water and attack the couch. It should come off (fingers crossed!)
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