Things are certainly no where near perfect yet, but they are definitely getting easier with practice. I did a few more floral paintings today, copying from artists I discovered recently and admire.
While most of the time, the enormous amount of time I spend on the internet is probably a waste, but sometimes I discover artists as a result of this which makes it all worthwhile. Some such artists from the recent past are Hazel Soan, Alvaro Castagnet, Corneliu Dragan, Fabio Cembranelli. Each one of them have inspired me to try new techniques, new colors, new subjects ... and I have learned much from them.
Today I did two paintings from Fabio Cembranelli, one is a demo from his website and the other is a copy of one of his paintings.
In this painting done from the demo, I worked completely wet in wet, trying to control wetness and brushwork, picking up excess water etc. The fuzzy look of the painting is most likely because of working wet in wet. Looks like I am yet to figure out how to make sharp edges in some places while working wet in wet.
With this one, I did a background wash of yellow and green, leaving the areas of the flowers fairly white. Once the background wash is dry, I went back and worked on the flowers. The thing I don't like about the painting is that the background and the flowers don't go together harmoniously. I should have added a few dabs of red to the background, and pulled in some green into the flowers.
And an ostrich study inspired by Hazel Soan's painting.