Last night I completed my final painting in my seven-week summer Still Life Painting class at Fleisher. I started out on a different subject than what I ended up with. Frankly, I was not feeling very engaged when I first got there. I think it had a lot to do with the fact it was my last class (i.e., disappointment) AND we were doing a one-session painting (i.e., anxiety).
I had not done a one-session painting in many, many years so I was nervous how I was going to begin. Now, what artists did as a preliminary sketches to determine value and work out compositional problems are hot items on the Internet. On Google or ebay, all you have to do is type in "postcard paintings" or "painting a day" and you'll get overloaded with results of varying degrees of quality.
So, the final product is unfinished. I plan on returning to it this week to finish it up. The issues I want to tackle are the background and, in the process, refine the shape of the bowl. I think I can also go in and take care of the thickness of the tallest stem. Once I define the foreground and background and add some cast shadows the piece will be stronger (and I'll be happier with it). Overall, it's not horrid or even half bad considering where I am with my skills.
Thoughts anyone?
