Painting #357 - Jan 16 - Great painting day

It was a very inspirational day, we had our Blue Moon meeting today instead of Wednesday (our usual), so since Sue didn't have school today, we met early (which means no beer, boo hoo, just kidding), don't need beer to paint, but we did have the chocolate (dark of course), and the pretzels, so we were all working on some project or other, no general project for all, which we sometimes do. Sue was working on some 4" x 6" paintings for something going on in Muskegon, Carol was working on a small landscape, Bev was working on our next Tibbits show, which is Black & White, and I was working on my blog painting, I brought out the Mill painting that I had started the other day in acrylics, I almost got it done at Sue's, but I did have a lot to do, and still needed a couple hours to complete it when I got home, all total, I probably have about 11 hours in this one, it was a major project for me, I am not used to working with the acrylics, so I struggled a bit, but I do believe I have it down pretty good, I really did enjoy working on this painting, as as I said before when I was working on the acrylics, I just painted with them like I paint with the gouache, that really works for me, I'm not much into the texture of the paint showing, I like the smoothness of this, so I'm pretty sure that is my style for the time being.

This painting is quite complicated, I worked on the right hand corner first, I said before, I start these paintings out with a thin overall middle tone in the local color to get the placement, now then, I have made adjustments to this one, I had to adjust the width of the front on the mill (I had it too wide), and I made adjustments to the roof too, but the rest if pretty close to how I first laid it in. Like I said, I started with the right hand corner first and got that to a fairly close finish, then, I did change the color of the sky too, almost forgot to mention that, I had it blue at first, but the photo looks fairly white, well, white isn't very interesting, so I made it yellow, I really like the change, the photo did have the blue reflections in the water though, so I think this really works. I meant to mention where this lovely mill is, for those of you who do not know, this is in Bellevue, MI, I went there to take these pictures so many years ago with my Mother, so this painting makes me think of my Mom, miss her. Now, today I really got into finishing this, and I absolutely love the water reflections of the mill, and the green scum, love it.

I really meant to explain how I worked on this, I do get carried away, well, I always work from the farthest to the closest, which also works for me, then the stuff that's closest, is on top of the behind stuff, I think it gives it more depth, oh yes, did I say that one of the reasons that it took so long to paint was that it was an 8" x 10" on claybord, I do think I mentioned it the other day when I started it, but just to make sure, I said it again. I really like this little painting and I hope you do too.