Challenge! Day One

 

I finished the cherry blossoms. Yay! So this is my painting for the day, but because I did most of it last month it feels sorta like cheating... I really need to chill, I guess.  

 So, since the Sakura painting went very quickly I thought I'd play with some alla prima (wet into wet) painting, just to see how the paint behaves and how to get it on the canvas without muddying it.

This is the result. I pretty much hate it. But, I did learn from the experience, and that was the point. I want to let it dry and paint on it some more, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise... I might do it anyway.

I painted in the background, then the tree, then used a dry brush to try to create the effect of wind in the branches, which succeeded for a while but then looked like I just smudged the paint (which... I guess is what I did). I'll come back and look at it tomorrow and decide what is to be done with it.

I made a page on my website for this month's Challenge paintings! 

Sakura Sakura

A little more definition on the foreground blossoms. I'm headed to Hobby Lobby to spend my Christmas gift card from my son Brandon on painting stuff, and maybe some fiber stuff.  :D

Sakura

A little work on my cherry blossoms. I darkened the lower corner of the sky, defined branches, filled in some background blossoms, and defined the shapes of the foreground flowers a bit.