Above you see the final painting of my boots but not necessarily the version I prefer. I found my boots in a box a few months ago. I hadn’t seen them in years. They’re so comfortable and they’re my go to boots for running errands – along with my bright red Pumas. Today is the day following my completion of this painting above and it’s the first time I compared it with the previous version which I over painted – see below.

The initial version is very colorful. The brush strokes are expressive. I hadn’t been so “correct” about everything. My brain thinks “it is messy”, I couldn’t handle it and found it a bit too chaotic. I considered this initial version “failed”. That was OK with me. All painting practice is good – just making an attempt is fine. At the point of my “failure” I thought I would try some things. I darkened the background, toned down some of the color and “corrected” shapes within the boots. I didn’t realize I was killing this more exciting painting. The past years of my brain training makes it hard to appreciate random expressive brushstrokes and bold color. I try from time to time but it’s a struggle. My training is portrait realism, though increasingly I add a bit of expression and creativity “around” a face. I tried expressiveness “on the face” once” and posted it. It’s awful!.

I like the final painting, the bluer one at the top – but I find it less exciting. This experience has been important for me and I’ll continue to attempt to push past my limitations and the discomfort I feel when things are not “correct”. It’s sad for a painter to feel that way. Correctness might be important when assessing a realistic portrait but not BOOTS! I took many photos of my boots posed differently. I’ll likely try to paint them again in a different pose.

RESISTANCE: Oh my gosh! When do we get a break!! So far the Supreme Court and other Federal courts are barely holding together the provisions of the Constitution, although it is the Supreme Court which has gotten us into this mess and Garcia is still not back. Fortunately many others immigrants have been saved from deportation without “due process”, at least for now and Trump is pissed. Significantly, Donald’s ‘Big Beautiful New Deal” also failed in committee even before it could go to the House which saves Medicaid, which provides care to “the most vulnerable amongst us” ie, food and health care to children, medical care to people with extraordinary medical conditions, and medical care for the lowest income population and Veterans care as well. We have such immoral leadership in the Republican Party with Donald’s attempt to eliminate this level of support so the richest people in the world and large corporations can have more is IMMORAL – PLAIN AND SIMPLE! The reason Donald’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which he insisted it be called – didn’t get out of committee is because of the RESISTANCE throughout the country. Republicans from some districts know their tenure would be over in 26 if they did not vote to save Medicaid. 5 Republicans on that committee voted with Democrats providing a vote of 21against the bill to 15 which closed it down. I am thankful for those 5 votes. Between the Supreme Court ruling and the defeat of this bill he wanted to pass desperately, this was not a good week for Donald. I think he’s still smiling, however, because of the prospect of a $400 million luxury plane from Qatar. We’ll see. His lack of morality has no bound but then what would one expect from a criminal. This is what criminals do. Bye for now. Winifred

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Still lifes are not particularly exciting for me to paint – though I paint them. Painting still lifes is good practice, however, because of the varying shapes, textures and colors involved, along with the challenge of complex composition. Painting still lifes actually helps in painting portraits. In fact, painting in any style assist with painting any other style. You can look at this painting and see all the separate elements I had to paint. There were decisions and layers of brush strokes involved with each item.

I’m working up to the 10,000 paintings said to be necessary before one can expect to claim “mastery” in oil painting. I’m still under 1000 paintings, so I have a ways to go. It’s time for another portrait. Have a wonderful weekend. Winifred

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What a journey this painting has had. It was intended as a little practice exercise – to paint something I would not particularly care about. To allow that the painting would not be “precious” as they say, allows one to be more comfortable experimenting – such that what or how one paints just doesn’t matter. So that was my mindset which carried throughout the painting process – as you will see. Below is the reference image – a little yellow plate with grapes on a brown surface.

Below is a crop from my initial painting of the plate and grapes.

When I stood back to look, it was apparent I was doing my same old realism and I didn’t want to do that. So, I scraped the paint off the plate. I think it’s rather pretty but I wanted something different from just pretty. It’s getting less hard for me to to paint something relatively well (the plate) and then decide – NO – scrape it off and try again. I maintained the grapes throughout. Below was the next attempt.

Above, I painted over plate and the background and started adding random colors. Again, I decided NO and scraped off the paint. Then I decided I would approach it differently. I would find my little yellow plate and set up what would be a background and table covering and work from this structure. Below is that photo of what would be my background reference image:

Above: I thought that having this reference would assist me with what I wanted to accomplish. I found a piece of stiff cloth I like to use because it will hold stiff folds. It’s actually a piece of house painters floor protective covering which has vinyl on one side. I set the little yellow plate on it – no grapes – and I photographed the plate against the cloth which gave me a reference background and table covering. Below was my first attempt using the reference to form my background.

Above: Rather interesting colors and shapes but not what I wanted. Here again, the plate shape is painted with a sense of realism reflecting of the original shape than I wanted, if not the color. Thus, I’m heading down the wrong path again. I struggle with this. Below, I try again.

Above: Not so bad except that the color turned to mud because I hadn’t sufficiently dried nor scraped off the tan/gold paint you see before it. This time I would allow it to dry over night and reapply cooler paint colors during my next paint session. Below- the final PERHAPS.

In actuality, the light colors in this painting are very neutral – not so warm hued as they appear in this photo of the painting. (It could just be my screen.) I intensified the grape color, added deeper reds to the grapes and added a couple additional grapes as I always enjoy doing. I admit I never took the grape stems too seriously. I succeeded in a looser background with lots of texture, random abstract strokes and lots of energy. The background is not necessarily pretty but it’s not BORING. That’s important to me. To have energy and not to be boring was my only objective for this little exercise – which turned out NOT to be such a “little” exercise. In keeping with the intention to not make this painting “precious”, I’m going to sand down the background as soon as this painting dries more. I have found that the result of sanding a painting during the painting process or after, most often enhances the painting. It allows some of the underlying colors to come through and it affects the edges in some way. I expect it to become more interesting. I’m not sure what will happen. If the results are particularly interesting I will show you. If you actually made it this far – thank you for sharing this journey with me. Winifred

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