365 Paintings in 365 Days #48

5x5 inches. Oil on Board

Strawberry II

ok, so not as happy with this one as the last one, but it got me out of my dark background comfort zone. I will do some more of them, but my next one has a dark background.

Learning Points:
1. Light background. Finding a light color grey that I was happy with was not easy. Do I pick a compliment color to make a grey from? Or not?
2. How do I blend or flood color into the background to make the color brighter? Or do I not do that on a light background. (I did it a little bit)
3. Painting the same values together without getting lost? The leaves, or most of them, are the same value as the background and took some tweaking to get them to show up. I added a darker green here and there. And added a little darker grey background around the leaves just up to the edges.
4. Mixing greens. It is my least favorite color to mix...or the hardest for me. I understand you can mix black and yellow to make a green, but it is never the color I want. I have a book 1500 Color Mixing Recipes. It is not very good. Don't rush out and buy it. Most all of the green recipes don't even get close to the color they show. It is a good concept, but it is not a good book; the recipes are awful.
5. Tiny details. Anyone have any suggestion for a really good detail brush for oils to paint wet into wet with??? This is tough. A hard bristle puts too much paint, and a soft bristle doesn't put any and lifts off paint...I am searching for the illusive Goldie Locks brush!
6. Threshold. It is there. But, very subtle.
7. Shadows, highlights and light to dark. Learning where and how much to put. I had the strawberry under a lamp, but if I painted what I thought I saw, it was not right, so I had to darken the shadows and lighten the highlights.

ps. I did blend the edges of the strawberry more after I took the picture and it does not look so pasted in. :D