"Sunlit"

On my PaintingFriends forum, we have a monthly challenge we call YOP (Year of Painting) where Ann Buckner from Oklahoma puts up a challenge every month and we are to paint whatever we want from a couple of reference photos and post it on the 20th of each month. This has been such fun, and it's amazing how many different takes one bunch of artists can come up with for the challenge. This one was a cluster of grapes...and guess who's never painted grapes??? Right...me.

Of all our challenges, I think I've learned most from this one because I had to really install into my painting head that you can't mix purple and yellow without getting MUD. My first attempt did turn into deep ugly mud and is living in my waste basket in about a million pieces. But, after many attempts with colors, I did come up with quin magenta, cabozale purple, quin perm rose, cobalt blue, WN orange, and gamboge and came out with a variety of acceptable grape colors. The main trick seems to be to let whatever you put down completely dry before going back in with another color...regardless of the color. Good lesson learned. When I can get my act together, I'm going to do a little demo on the forum for anybody who might want to take a look...www.paintingfriends.com. Come visit us...we're always painting something...