Thick and thanks

8 x 8
oil on BFK

10 x 8
oil on BFK

Thank you for commenting on the post from yesterday! I appreciate your encouragement and feedback, Celeste, Sam, and Loriann ! (Thanks to Gregory, too, for his Facebook comments!)

I have been trash talking my new oil paintings and that's not productive and smells a bit of behaviors I don't find attractive, so I will stop. Right now. Thanks for calling me on it!

Today I took stock of what I've painted so far. I wrote little critiques of each piece (which I will share with my teacher at our next session) and found something good to say about them. Of course, I had many criticisms, too. A common criticism was the miserly amount of paint I applied. Today I determined to lay it on thick!

On the top you see my return to fruit. The beautiful pear, lit from below. I wanted to play with the complementary color and leave big globs of paint untouched. The pear is floating and that's a problem I created with the odd lighting, but I still kind of like it.

Next, I tried a painting using only palette knife. It was like frosting a waterfall cake! Oil is fun and I will remember to apply it more liberally in my next paintings.

New Pear

Yesterday's pear was flat and I couldn't seem to paint it round. Today's feels a little more round.

Have you heard of the "Painting a Day" movement? I don't really know too much about it, but I believe it was started by Duane Keiser. I am going to paint a painting a day for a month and see what I think.

My hope is that by painting every day, I will become a better observer. Paint more quickly and decisively. Push myself. See. Learn. Grow.

New Pear, 9 X 6, pastel on Wallis paper