Wow, I have had a severe case of the writing doldrums. While life has been zipping along at its usual clip, blogging didn't seem like a good idea since my days were full of the same old errands, cleaning, sewing, and painting. As for the last two subjects which are the usual more entertaining parts of my blogs (to my way of thinking, anyway), the results of those endeavors weren't worth talking about.
So . . . I have been messing around with Raking the Hay 2 (which you've seen before). You already know that I've changed the composition to give more room to the farmer. Doing that meant that I had to re-draw that farmer, his tractor, and mechanized hay rake. Then, Sharon suggest that I do a practice painting of just that so I could fool around with the colors and let muscle memory get to work. Here he is:
Interestingly enough, this enlarged version made me realize that there are still portions of this part of the photo that I can't see clearly. After a bit of pondering on the problems that presented, I decided how to deal with those areas. One problem solved. I also saw areas where even though I had drawn this several times, I had to paint over the left hand tire when painting the top bar of the yellow rake - yellow over gray doesn't work well. Remember that, NP. There's not much use in using the masking material as the actual painting already has washes in this area (which were planned and shouldn't present too much of an issue). I'm happy with the colors in this version. Since this section is now larger, I was able to tone down the red I had used before on the rake and farmer's shirt.
While it doesn't seem like a lot was done today, significant progress was made. This is going to sound strange, but the most significant part of all of this is I am learning how to think my way through painting instead of relying on gut instinct.
BIG difference, there!
didn't realize that you'd have muscle memory with painting -- only with things like playing the piano. Anyhow, I think it's looking good.
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