When I last posted about the lemon painting, I wasn’t very far into it. It’s now finished, and I’ll try to explain the steps I took to get there. It took longer than I thought it would.
I’m learning that painting is a lot like writing. It doesn’t make sense to write in every single detail of a scene — what every single thing looks like, sounds like, smells like, feels like; the reader would get so bogged down in minutia that the story would stop. A good writer will leave much up to the imagination.
Similarly, a good painter will leave out a lot of details on purpose so as to direct the viewer’s attention to the parts that the artist wants to emphasize.
I am not yet a good painter. I put too many brushstrokes in the foreground cloth of my lemon painting, and they drew the eye away from the subject. Because the painting was already dry, I was forced to sand them out.
The sanding process turned the cloth a bit yellower than it had been.
This is what my setup looked like post-sanding as I started the last day of painting.
I put in a new foreground and turned my focus to finishing up the cut lemons. The ones on the left needed lightening, which I did here.
And here’s the final product:
I’m pretty pleased with it. I think it looks cool in person.
Categories: Art
Tags: art, beginning oil painting, oil painting
Flabby Brain 
That is pretty awesome! You must be so proud! Can’t wait to see it hanging in your home!!