A Dramatic Change in the progress

Today my painting went form this...

To this...

I was falling quickly out of love with my first composition as both objects were calling for all the attention and I became confused about my subject. And then when I came to painting the white cloth things just got so bad that the little jug was the only thing worth saving, so I painted over the rest and picked a rose from the garden.

It is still unfinished, the rose is just sketched in for now and I still have to work on the jug. (The problem with painting from life is that shapes change if you move just a little bit! But I'm happy with where it's going and I may add something below the jug on the right to break up that diagonal line the composition has taken. 

From a Corner of My World

Quite by accident everything in this photo describes me and my life. As you can see I have to compromise with space when I come to do larger paintings! This is a painting I'm doing on commission though it is the best kind of commission because I could paint almost any horse I wanted! I used as reference a sketch of Sam Savitt's from this book:

It was only a small sketch with not much detail. I changed the horses head around and tried to figure out the colours. Colouring is hard for me, especially with oils, pastel colours are so much easier to work with because you don't mix them just blend them on the painting. Maybe I should do a 70 oil sketch challenge next!!