So very very sick. The past two days were torture. My kids bring home these GI viruses and they always hit me twice as hard as it does them. Anyway I slept in this morning. For me 6:30 is sleeping in.

I may be down but I’m not out. I didn’t get out to paint plein air but I got some work done anyway. I did some color work on my still life. This is on paper. I started with the same limited palette I’d been using on the larger painting (upper left) and was still having the same problem with the pink not popping off even with darkening the adjacent pinks considerably more than what was observed. So I added orange and blue to my palette and immediately liked it better. I think the pink wasn’t popping because the whole thing was pink… duh.

Then I started asking questions with the values. If I darkened everything else would that make the pink brighter? By the last one I was happy enough. This also ended up being a reminder of edges. That’s pretty much the same pink in the highlight area of all 4. The first one has a hard edge though and that makes it pop more than the others with the softer edge even though it’s fighting all of its surrounding pinkness. That hard edge draws your eye when all of the other edges are so soft.

These took less than an hour, and as usual, by the late hour of 7:30 my kids running around downstairs looking for breakfast forced me to wash my brush and put the lid on my palette. This is why I go OUT to paint on weekends. I’d have another 2 hours.

Here’s one of the drawings I did before I started the painting. Nothing special but you can see how I’m trying to play a bit of hide-n-seek with those triangles. I think I’ll also let some of the other edges go more vague too. Seeing the painting in the previous post after doing these studies makes me feel like it’s being way too literal already and much too matter-of-fact. I’m regretting posting it.

I may get out later for a painting or two. Fingers crossed.

I’m starting to use still life set ups during the week to work on some of my problem areas. I’m slowing down but trying to stay in the same mental zone as plein air landscapes just without the rushing. That basement painting I started a while ago was taking me in the wrong direction and I need some other exercises to try and get back on course.

Here you can see how I’ve had time to focus on the drawing, much more so than I’d typically care to. This is a tricky item. It’s a couple of ellipses laying on a flat table but it tapers towards the ends and is more of a teardrop than a circle if you continued the tips. It also has a geometric surface pattern. Right now this is just two colors plus white (quinacridone red + phthalo green) and is really just a glorified drawing at this point. I’ve only been trying to get the drawing to work and I’m about to begin pushing more away from the given. I’ve already begun to do that a bit on the little triangles and I want to allow shapes to interplay and react to each other more than they would if I simply took a photo of this object. I think the pattern of triangles complicated with the shiny surface reflections will be a good place to try.

Also, I chose this item not only because it’s my daughter’s head band and I think of her when I see it but also because it’s very pink. I find pinks to be horribly difficult. I first noticed my deficiency when trying to paint roses. I just can’t get pink to be pink enough. The brightest spots of pink on this are really kicking me in the ass. I don’t know why I have such trouble with highly saturated subjects. I hope this exercise will help before spring arrives. This is acrylic, 12×16″.

Tomorrow I may add a third color to my palette. But first I may try little thumbnails to get my pinks where I need them to be. The table surface is white and you can see how dark I’ve already pushed it to try and get the pink hotspots to be brighter. It’s not working yet. Maybe I’m thinking too much about it.