Day one, first creation! I am pleased with how deep and rich the red color showed up. Also, I feel like I did well with the shadows and highlight on the apple. I'm not sure what I was thinking with the soapy green and household cleaner yellow shadow/highlights. However, I am cool with the quality of the leaf and stem; ironically not bad considering I struggle with naturalism!
Day two, an experiment with negative space. I like how the two interior blueberries showed up but any attempt at the idea of "positive/negative" space was destroyed by my idea to create a blue/yellow palette. It's such a failed attempt to be clever!
Day three, not upset with how this turned out. Yes, I know it's not hard to made a "C" shaped fruit into a "C" shaped image... but I'm pleased with how I was able to match the color of a cantaloupe. The shadow isn't too bad either... it doesn't distract from the image while reinforcing its verticality... I'm proud of this one!
Day four, I found myself in a "fruit" motif apparently BUT the letter "D" is very unforgiving! So... dragonfruit obviously. Well, to be honest, I was really proud of my observation of the fruit and the leaves.... AND the transition between the two! BUT then I had to figure out how to integrate the idea of "D" as a letter... and I clearly fucked up the concepts of color, design, artistry, and irony on a single 5x7 piece of paper.
Day five, eggplant... my leaves are such a fail. I think I matched the eggplant color pretty well and not sure how I made the eggplant look so plump. I'm not sure I could reproduce this image... and that shadow, what a shit shadow! Now that I look at it, that shadow has a highlight.... how the heck does a shadow have a highlight!?!
Day six, I'll tell you what I like... the highlight on the strawberries is pretty kick-ass... and the navel oranges which accidentally turned into pretty convincing mandarin oranges... so, what I don't like: the yellow fruit is supposed to be pineapple and the green fruit is supposed to be honeydew. And while those blueberries are suspiciously blue, they are clearly blueberries. But what are the fruits on the bottom... please don't say kalamata olives.
Day seven, it's here that I discover that I'm pretty good at sliced citrus fruit! The background is watercolor but, unlike the prior examples, this time I wasn't afraid to dig deep and get a vibrant/rich green (to compliment the grapefruit). One of my Insta followers (finally) gave me a shoutout... and told me this was her fave so far. Basically that means that I got followers on Insta that are paying attention to my progress!
Day eight, a honeydew should be the easiest to draw but I hit a creative block trying to figure out how to incorporate the letter "H" with thi perfectly round and perfectly smooth fruit. I did do a bit of "research" and discovered that the honeydew flower is quite delicate and thought it would provide a nice counterpoint to a discombobulated piece!
Day nine, a big challenge since I had no idea how to watercolor glass, ice, nor a liquid. Basically I found an image of a glass of iced tea and tried to paint every shape and match its hue as closely as possible. The lemon was the easy part. It was tedious work... and I'm not sure it comes across as ice in a liquid. It's a good example of artistic bias... I'm really trying hard to make it what I want to be and not being critical about how successful I was at doing so.
Day ten, discovered that watercolor can so easily get out of control and end up a soppy wet mess. However, grabbing a wad of paper towels and attempting to soak up the puddle on the paper really created a soft lit glow effect to the jalapeño... a happy accident... and one I doubt I'll ever be able to recreate!
Day eleven, my first attempt with gouache! I really love the vibrancy of the colors and how much richer the colors can be. The color of kiwi is very appealing to me and I noticed that the tiny black seeds explode like an interior firework in the middle of the flesh of the fruit.
Day twelve, I couldn't be bothered with trying to turn fruit, or veg, into essentially a 90 degree angle. I'm pretty good at citrus slices. And gouache is actually easier than watercolor because with watercolor, you have to leave blank the white parts "reflecting" light. With gouache, you can apply white pigment on top of the darker hues to get the same effect.
Day thirteen, too easy. I could see this one coming since day one... since it's basically a circle with an "M" on it. There's no way this would be as effective in watercolor so the gouache really made this one pop. I also found that bad technique with the brush actually gave the "M" the stamped on look you'd expect to see on a legit M&M!
Day fourteen, this is where the gouache really showed what it could do. I don't think I'd be able to get the white reflecting light by using watercolor. This one turned out better than I could have expected and I think I was clever incorporating the "N" into the nectarine. Or maybe naïve... that's my lack of a critical eye showing up again.
Day fifteen, my least favorite. I could not get the pigment to be as vibrant as I wanted. Also, an orange has a reflective surface with shadowy pits all over it. Those pits can so easily become spots or polka-dots. Overall, very unhappy with this one.
Day sixteen, this one was created without any type of reference photo! I love the texture on this one but it was just a happy accident. Basically it is a series of green circles with a lot of darker green for shadows and white pigment for highlights. This one was just fun... and I feel like I had a vision and executed it as intended. Nice to know I'm getting better... even if only a tiny bit.
Day eighteen, the subject in place of the negative space is a trick I'm not clever enough to pull off yet... and it comes across quite naïve. Raspberries are more challenging than I would have guessed. Lots of shadows and light. And I have to admit I was lazy with the color matching. Raspberries are red-ish. So I chose a color that was red-ish. Sorted.
Day nineteen, I'm kinda ok with how the greenery turned out... maybe it redeems me from the terrible leaf on the Quince. My reference photo suggested two different ways to make the seeds. Set in a dark red shadow or underlined by a bright reflection. It was finicky and I became very aware of my lack of mastery with a brush.
Day twenty, I dunno... it looks like a "T" and it's a turnip? That background is a complete mess but I'd like to think it's got some character (or at least looks intentional). I surprise myself with my laziness sometimes. Not that I'm lazy but that I'm inconsistently lazy. Sometimes I'll put in the work and focus on the tiniest details. Other times I'll burn through a piece just so I can go back to being a bum. I never know when the mood may strike.
Day twenty-one, nothing, and I mean NOTHING we eat, consume, sniff, or lick starts with the letter "U" except for maybe underwear which is a totally different prompt. Udon noodles... yeah it's a stretch. And once again, I was completely lazy with the background yet I love how it turned out! So the moral of the story, don't be afraid to phone it in! Eventually it's gotta pay off!
Day twenty-two, my goal was not only improve illustration skills but also get closer to the mastery of irony. It's a "V" right!? But I still can't tell when I think I'm too clever or when I am failing to recognize just how uninteresting and boring all this paint is. Would anyone pay $9.99 + tax to hang this on their wall? No.
Day twenty-three, the more I worked on this one, the worse it got. Watching the video, I really liked how it turned out within the first few moments of the painting. Then it all went downhill up to, and including, the disastrous background. I had to get creative to salvage what I had... mostly because I didn't want to start over!
Day twenty-four, nothing works on this one! The quality of the paint looks so shoddy! And the light source on the cup conflicts with the light source on the straw. Ice is not easy to paint... and while I think it looks decent on the thumbnail, the closer you get, the worse it looks. I'm fine with moving on from this disaster!
Day twenty-five, I was trying to be clever... and I don't hate it. My reference picture was so much glossier and the painting shows way too much texture. But the more I live with it the more I like it. And I'm so close to being done... just one more letter and I can move on. Let the procrastination begin.
