There were two things that struck me about this arrangement and made me want to paint it: 1. the contrast between the shiny cup and the satin peaches, and 2. the reflected lines on the green cup made by the striped fabric.
I swung back to impressionistic today. Thanks to you all who left comments on yesterday's post saying you understood about my conflict between painting realism and more suggestive painting. It is so good to hear I'm not TOTALLY insane, and that others relate.
Something came to me while I was painting this. Color is relative. You may look at a color in your setup and think "oh that's blue." But sometimes it's only blue in relation to colors right around it. A trick I use is to start with the color right around it and think to myself..."ok that color is MORE blue than this, so I'll add some blue and try it out." Even still, sometimes the real color can be kind of boring so I tend to exaggerate. I have found that if I keep the value accurate, I can experiment more with the color.
