Starting the 3rd week, painting every day #15

Well, this is the one that I started yesterday and decided that it was more than my little brain could handle, see why?  Well, I keep telling myself that I'm not going to do that to myself and, what is it that trips my trigger?  Huh . . Huh?  Well, it's this stuff that really gets me and I love it but when you are trying to paint a painting in a couple hours, this isn't it.  Oh well, I did enjoy it but I'm really going to keep this type (or at least try to) down to a minimum, I don't want to take 3-5 hours to do one of these and that's what it took, so, now that we have that out of the way, I will explain a bit how I did this one.

I used the opaques again, although I did paint on it a bit in class today and I did use a few transparent colors, the darks behind the tree trunks, basically, the rest is opaque.  I like playing with the negative spaces and there weren't that many here, on the left edge, the lights, that was some.  Mostly, this was a lot of detail and there is no explanation for that except jump in and do it.  I started with the old gentleman in the foreground, he posed for me, I would have rather he was natural, but when one has the camera in hand and you ask for a picture of them, they usually just do what this gentleman did, pose.  Notice that he has only one foot, he told me that he was a world war I vet, of course this photo was taken about 20 years ago and I'm pretty sure he isn't still around anymore, I meant to paint this one in pastel, and I do have one started but, obviously I never finished it, I still like this photo so I decided to do it small, but, it's still a lot of detail, even though some is just infered.  I then painted the little shack behind him and worked my way around until I had one layer of paint on pretty much everything, then you just pick a spot and work, then move to the next, don't think about the whole thing, it's too much, just pick one spot and work it up, you don't have to even finish it, just do a bit more than you had, and keep it moving, I did start to get tired, and you can tell, I left the foreground melons for last and I see that they could use a bit more fine tuning, ah well, it's in the matt now and that's where it's going to stay, that is my motto, once I sign my name and put the matt on, it's as done as it will get, if I decide it needs more something, then I will do it again, not change the one I have.  Well, it's been a long and busy day and I'm going to bed, try again tomorrow, goodnight.  Hope you enjoy this one as well.