painting the still life

Last year, I made about 60 acrylic paintings from life, in approx. 60 days, under my surname. I don't have a reason other than because I enjoy mixing things up, 'leveling up', and more than anything else: having a secret project. I tend to think of painting and drawing as solving a series of problems or games. However, I find that painting realistically is quite meditative, because once the subject is in front of me, I just have to mix and choose colours.

I was especially proud of that apple. It took me a few days to get through it, and get the transparency I wanted. I used a piece of transparent red plastic to see my values on most of these - a great tip from Lindsey Carr. For this series, I also tried out holding the tip of my loaded paintbrush/palette knife next to my subject to compare colours, and I even tried pre-mixing colours. That was a revelation, because for me, once the colours are right, the rest is just so much easier.