First off, let me thank photographer Cathleen Tarawhiti for allowing artists to use her work as stock photography! Thanks beyond words. Cathleen is one of my favorite stock photographers and I already have acquired a stack of her photos, which I plan on using as reference in the future.

Acrylic on Gessobord, 5×5 inches. WORK IN PROGRESS

There’s a long story behind this painting. Well, maybe not that long, but I’ll make it feel long! 😉

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not participating in Daily Paintworks. The key thing for many artists is “daily.” I haven’t been very good about producing something “daily,” but lately I’ve been really trying.

Today (well, last night) I had a busy day and couldn’t get to painting until later in the evening. I had several oil paintings in the works, almost done—but decided that they weren’t quite ready for prime time. (Later I discovered that one probably was. Oh, what a fool am I!) So I decided to pull out the old set of acrylics. Well, the new set of acrylics (I bought a few new tubes and had some samples to try out) but you get the idea.

I haven’t done a lot of acrylic painting lately. I never really have painted as much in acrylics as I have oils. The last time I painted in acrylics it wasn’t that tough and kind of fun (finished a portrait sketch in about an hour) so I thought, “How hard can it be?” I thought I’d bang out my “daily painting” in an hour and that would be it!

Oh, what a fool am I!

I chose a lovely stock photo to paint from and got started. And had trouble. I don’t think the painting is beyond hope—not at all—but I had a very limited palette and I didn’t like my brushes (that’s it, blame the materials!). Ugh. Anyway, I got stressed out. The “quick one hour sketch” took several hours. Very frustrating. But not beyond hope.

So that is this painting’s story. I’ll update this post when I do whatever else it is I’ll be doing to this painting. Probably not too much more. (I hope it’s close to being done! I’ve suffered enough! 😉 )

UPDATE: I may not complete this painting for a while. I may actually just start a new painting using the same stock, but with a larger size. (And I may do that one in oils.) Am still not quite sure.