"Cream or Sugar?" - A Still Life from the Paint and Draw Together Challenge for April 2013

"Cream or Sugar?"     8" x 10"     Acrylic on Archival Canvas Board

Here's my first finished painting for the site called "Paint And Draw Together" where artists of all degrees of talent get together and paint, giving each other critiques on their work and ideas for improvement. The theory of the site is that by gathering up like-minded souls one can enrich their own lives as well as others through helpful criticism and compliments for a job well done. Up til now, I've been afraid to play my hand at this, worried about what others would say about my work and also worried that it would be a waste of time, as I have tried so hard to work only from my own photographs and my own references. But the truth is, the greatest artists we have ever seen applied themselves to learning from the masters before them. So I want to be timid no more. I don't want to bite into that lie that it would be a waste of my time to spend some careful hours recreating others' photos or paintings, because the honest truth of it is, so long as I'm painting, any and all practice is a step in the right direction, and I have so, so much to learn!

This month's challenge particularly stood out to me, for I have never deemed myself very good at still life's nor at dramatic lighting, and this held both. So I dove in and am thrilled with the results. Tyler was so sweet too - while I was painting, he stood back and exclaimed, "Wow, Missy. I didn't realize you could paint like that!" That's just about the best compliment a girl could ever get from her man! I was brimming from ear to ear, and I still am at the thought of those sweet words. =)   So my hope for the future is this:  to take this world by storm, that some day, people would know my name and my art and that it would bring warmth into their homes! And so until then, I shall practice, practice, practice until I am blue in the face, with paint smudges of course! =D