Still Life Madness

This is the last still life I will show before moving on to some of the dunes paintings. I've been doing my best to paint the gesture of shapes instead of drawing the objects that I see. So far I think this is the best attempt. I like how the values turned out which almost always leads me to liking a painting. This one was also an experiment with using color reflection on everything and trying to get a good amount of bouncing of the light. This was a lot of fun to paint and with practice I think more still lifes will take on this quality.

And on a side note I just got back from the Richmond art exhibit open juried walkthrough. I am joyed to say that one of my paintings made it in. This was my first juried walkthrough and  my stomach was tied in knots through out the entire process. I had put an oil and pastel in. The oil sadly didn't make it but there were a ton of better paintings that didn't make it in. The biggest suprise though was the pastels. I couldn't come to grip with how many awesome pastels there were. My stomach filled with butterflies when I walked into the gallery. I wanted to turn around and go home but ended up staying and am happy that I did. It was wonderful seeing so much great work and while I didn't agree with all the judges choices he did get a good diverse field. He did throw out a lot of great landscapes because that field was dense in amazing work. He through out a piece that I thought was best of show but then again im not the judge. It was an oil and if it ever turns up I want it. The show opens Nov 3rd for anyone interested.