End of Eggshells

That's it folks - I decided to go the whole hog, seeing it had gone a bit haywire anyway, and paint in the decorative edge of the plate, which I did quite quickly with dots and dashes, though it may look painfully intricate (and pretty skew)! Thanks for all your encouragement - I do think I learnt a lot - but realise I have much more to learn about reflections and shadows, and that Andrew Wyeth was right, as Sandy Maudlin told in a comment, that eggs and ears probably are the hardest things to paint. I went to a watercolor workshop once, where our homework was to paint an egg, a bone and a rock, and I thought I had it taped - the secret, I told anyone who admired my egg, was not to draw a pencil outline first, but to use the brush edge to swoop around the egg shape - well, let's just say there's more to it than that...

[In the middle of this project, I puzzled over why my 'still-life' looked so different to what I had on the paper - then it dawned on me that one of our resident cooks had deposited a few more eggshells on the plate, probably thinking crazy mother was just collecting them for some other arty pursuit (I've been painting in the kitchen, being the warmest room in the house right now.) Ha ha ha!]

How not to paint reflections - Part two of Eggshell WIP

Aaargghhh! I did stuff it up - I made my nice clean washes into mud and murky browns by putting too strong darks too soon and then making it worse worrying at it instead of going away and letting it dry. Nothing like displaying one's failures to all and sundry (I hope you all learn from this!)
After I finally let it rest and dry, I lifted some of the murk and at last followed Laura's sensible suggestion (see comments on previous post) to work a bit more on the eggshells before going back to those #*!* shadows. If nothing else this work-in-progress exercise will serve to remind me what not to do in future. I will take Jana's serene advice in her interview with Liz Massey to learn from the experience, let it go and move on. But I will keep on at this for a while longer, until I've either rescued it, or am totally satisfied that I've utterly botched it.

Walking on eggshells

I've decided to follow Laura's example and show my eggshells painting that I mentioned in the last post, as a work in progress, but do be aware, anyone who may take this as a step-by-step watercolour class, that it may go awry at any moment! I intended building layers of clean glazes to create subtle colour variations, but I already haven't been able to resist mixing some local colour and slapping it on. Above is the initial glaze of yellow ochre, with a little burnt sienna, with some shadow areas of burnt sienna with ultramarine mix. I lifted highlights out in places with a 'thirsty' brush and paper towel.
When that was completely dry I added more shadow washes, trying to vary them with the slight mauve and yellowish tinges I kept seeing. Those shadow/reflections in the foreground are really very dark against the plate and shells, so the next stage is taking some bold steps with a strong shadow mixture. I'm undecided whether to paint the plate as it is - an intricate cutout design around the edge, or leave it quite plain, which I probably should have thought about before I began. Any advice welcome!

Egg and biscuit

A special request from my friend Jill - a little painting of, and the recipe for, the biscuits we had for tea this morning - they were jolly nice and easy to make. What you do is:

Melt together: 4 oz/110g butter, 3oz/75g sugar (demerara or I used light brown) and 1 dessertspoon syrup or runny honey..... Sift 4oz/110g self-raising flour with a pinch of salt... Add 4oz/110g porridge oats and 2oz/50g dried cranberries... mix together evenly then pour in the syrup mixture. Stir well then form a dough with your hands... roll walnut-size bits into balls and press onto worktop... scatter more cranberries plus some flaked almonds on top and press gently in. Transfer to a baking sheet with a palette knife and bake at 350*F/170*C for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the tray for 10 mins before moving.

And I had to paint one of our farm eggs that we bought at the market too - not that it looks any different to any other egg, I'm sure, to the casual observer, but it is a very very big and pretty egg, being a gentle creamy colour instead of the standard brown or very white eggs we usually get. I seem to be seeing a lot of painting of white subjects lately - maybe just noticing more of them - and think it's something I must try to get better at. This white hen eggcup was really hard to paint - there's lots of scrubbing out of areas where I made it too dark, and some white crayon and pen on top where I added highlights, and some of my preserved white highlights are in the wrong places - lots more practice needed!