There's a Cliche For Everything

I was trying for "third time's the charm" but I ended up with "two out of three ain't bad."

Painting 1: Love it! Night sky, tomatoes... it's great and just what I had in mind.

Painting 2: Grapefruit against purple backdrop. Not so great. Whited out with gesso to paint over.

Painting 3: Grapefruit, part deux. Again, not my favorite. Better, but still not at all what I was looking for. Still, I kept it.

Painting 4: Avocado against vivid mustard sky. Love it! The green of the open avocado turned out just right. Calming, pretty. It's hanging up right now.

Painting 5: Looking again at the grapefruits, decide to white it all out again and try something different. Tried doing red peppers against blue sky. Disaster. Too much paint on the canvas at this point, plus I don't know what happened but the peppers were squashed and weird and the whole painting was just a mess.

So. Painting 1 and painting 4 are keepers. Paintings 2, 3, and 5 were, um, experiments that didn't succeed. So, I guess it's actually two out of five, but there were three on one canvas. See how it gets confusing?

Anyway. I'm left with two fun paintings that I really enjoy. Interestingly, the two paintings I like were done very quickly and without thinking too much. The other ones were a struggle for some reason. They all took too long and I couldn't get the colors 'right', so I had to keep trying. Also, this canvas was a slightly different shape than the other two, so I think I was having some spatial difficulties. But, it's a good lesson - just come up with an idea and do it. Fussing with it made things worse, not better.

So now I need to buy another couple canvasses, making sure they are the 'successful' size. And I'll just let ideas wander into my head over the next week. I actually think the wall behind the table could use a triptych, so I need two more things that would go with the avocado painting. The tomato painting is over the stove.

Now, I am tired and wishing I had the life of luxury so I could have my assistant go out and get Mexican takeout and bring it back for us.