So, one of the first things I did was look for a walkthrough. The king of walkthroughs is of course Bob Ross, and while I dutifully made some Happy Little Trees, I didn’t like the result.
However, this walkthrough was more my style. You don’t have to wait for the paint to dry and can knock it out in an hour, and the result is an excited teacup.
Here’s how that ended up:
There’s something wonky with the bottom of the teacup, but I don’t care. It was one of the first three things I did and it was encouraging. I highly recommend that walkthrough.
Of course, that was followed by the Pier Horror. I had a very realistic photo of a pier and I tried to copy it. The pier was okay, the water was impressive, the hills were acceptable. I invested a lot of time in it, but when I tried to work on the sky … a few hours later it was in the trash. There were also some daisies I finished and then trashed. I’m averaging 60% acceptable and 40% trash.
The pier should have taught me that a lovely photo will make a frustrating painting, but I still held on to that dream. I had a nice photo of a peony. It came out okay, though only after a lot of overpainting and extra work. But, it did give me a chance to practice water droplets, which you too can learn to paint if you follow this handy step-by-step process.
I like bits of that one. I really like the bottom left petal with the droplet right where the highlight is.
The problem is finding things to paint. I have some croquet balls I like to use in arrangements, because they’re colorful, and easy to draw (duh, circle).
Of course, just like with the guitar, it’s always about trying something harder, so now it’s time to move on to the human form.