This time I tried to loosen up a bit, and further reduced the elements in the painting. I added the clothes line because I like the “story” it tells of an Amish girl with a bright red dress. I added a horse and buggy, but the proportions are all wrong. The sky is way to saturated,…

I further loosened up, and added some chicken blobs to compensate for killing off the horse and buggy. They feel childish, I need to simplify. I used more Ivory Black to try to neutralize the sky, and it didn’t really work. I like the Phthalo blue in the sky, and the mountains feel better than…

Here I tried to cool down the house, though I was afraid it would recede too far. It ended up looking ok to me. I also added some hills, and cows and hay bales, and another fence… sheesh! The composition is an improvement again, but I overworked the sky, and the grass, and the fence posts…

This time I reduced the elements in the painting, and added a fence to try to help with perspective. I still relied too heavily on the masking fluid, and the house looks like it’s been cut and pasted into the painting. The scale is off for the field, and those mountains (where’d those come from?)…

This time I used Arches paper, and I wanted to stretch it. I messed up on the stretching, and redid it three times. That ended up washing all the sizing off the paper, and the colors didn’t blend at all. The trees look too geometric, and the whole thing feels very muddy because I overworked…

This is my first attempt. I used crappy paper, and it was a nightmare. First lesson was to bite the bullet, and use Arches. Second, I relied too heavily on the Masking fluid to preserve my whites. The chunky whites feel like a gimmick. I also relied fairly heavily on Ivory Black (I use Daniel…

I have always enjoyed painting, but have never dedicated myself to really learning how to paint well. I remember trying to learn how to paint with water colors as a kid because I loved what I saw artists do with the medium. But, I was never able to achieve that level of success with the…