
The painting of the grapes are from another lesson from Painting Still Lifes and the bottom painting is from the leftover paint from the lesson and is not quite finished.
I have a few issues with the book I purchased:
1) The reference photo for the painting is too small and therefore it makes trying to draw from the photo really difficult. The photo is thumbnail sized. There was no way I could make an accurate sketch of those grapes.
2) The photos on where to place the paint are too small – again thumbnail sized. There are some pictures that are about half a page, but they tend to be mostly of the finished painting or of some detail. This is not great when you need glasses to read. I usually end up printing an A4 sized picture and load up my photo full screen on the computer when working from photos I have taken.
3) The colors for the color mixing are too dark in the book. I think this could be a printing issue. I am using Artist’s quality pigments, in the appropriate amounts, and they come out completely different from the chart in the lesson. In this case, it seemed to have worked out ok.
I fast forwarded through the book and there are some larger pictures towards the back of the book. If you were a beginner trying to use this book, I would be really frustrated doing the lessons in the beginning as I would think I was doing something wrong with the color mixing. It is really difficult to see the differences in value in the book sometimes.
I have used up the last of my my 5 x 7″ canvas boards. It is interesting working small and for some reason it takes me twice as long to paint! I am still having issues with my backgrounds as I am still uncertain on how to place the paint and so I end up doing a lot of glazing.
I am waiting for some work to come in, so I will be doing another lesson tomorrow. It will be more fruit. 🙂