Scraping to a Better Painting

After taking a short painting hiatus so that I could focus on making jewelry for a variety of holiday show, it feels good to get back to an easel. 

The more I paint, the more I appreciate that I don't know many of the fundamentals taught in art school.

Much of what I learned as I pursued degrees in landscape architecture and designed gardens and public spaces informs what happens on my canvases,

but there's so much that I need to/want to learn about color mixing, understanding shadows and developing atmosphere.

 

My current focus is painting to learn, and not necessarily painting to end up with a good painting.

Lucky me....I'm learning from Martin Campos 

at Wayne Art Center.
 

Yesterday's still life had me struggling with the red cloth that covered the table and wrapped around the green bottle holding a lily stem.

My table was looking like an awkward red blob until Martin suggested that I mix some dark green for the deep shadows.

What a difference and what a good learning moment.

 

So.....

I had a good learning moment on a painting that I didn't consider a keeper.

While the paint was still wet, I decided to scrape it with a palette knife so that I could reuse the canvas.

 The more I scraped, the more I liked it.

Now I'm thinking that this is a painting that could go somewhere interesting.