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Day 301: Flighty Fun

Flighty White Egret (Watercolour)
Flighty White Egret (Watercolour)

I decided today that I really must finish my doggy portrait of Arthur and get it in the post – it’s been sitting on a cupboard watching me walk backwards and forwards across the kitchen every day and I can’t bring myself to post it because I have a feeling something’s missing.

One of the things I know is lacking is shadow. Because it was painted from a photo taken with flash my reference has no shadow information to work on. So I painted what was there and it just looks a bit odd…. so I picked up a paintbrush today and fiddled. I tried not to, but it happened… and the paper just won’t support it, so now it looks a bit rough. So disappointing after all that work. I’ve put it aside for now and when it’s dry I’ll decide whether it’s still good enough to send.

In the meantime I wanted to create something for the Blog and not wanting to get too involved in anything – fiddling is banned – I picked up an idea I have for the next Project Gallery members exhibition and tried to do a very simple study of it, sort of a shadow map 🙂 I really enjoyed painting it and realised I should do this more often, getting to know the subject a bit better before trying to drown it in a full blown (half baked) composition. You may see more of these, especially if I can find source photos as good as this – credits to Michael D Utin and Paintmyphoto.