@Felicia Forte I absolutely love this painting. There's something about it that hooks me - the design, the simple colorway, the viewpoint (as if I'm on my knees in the roses in my own garden). This is a wonderful little piece.

@Janet Abrahams how did you get that so quickly? I just heard of it from Galen on Sat

@Janet Abrahams ok now I am totally laughing at myself!!

It really was - I have a good amount to chew on - thanks everyone!

Following through with your "every color is no color" comment (which smacked me upside the head!), I had a little time today to play. I am not in the two tiers with access to your demos/instruction, so some of the insight you shared Sat was fresh to my ears. I approached this one with a simple palette - monochrome green with a tinted pink - And a sort of notan approach overtop a mostly high key older abstract underpainting (that was also green to pink). I blocked in my darker shape, then the lighter one, and slowly expanded to introduce variations inside each. Typically I work general to specific, but that has mostly been centered on finding my design to begin with (I paint things from my dreams and collide them with other bits from waking hours, and don't use photos or a setup for the start, but once I have a composition in place, I bring some onboard to assist with proper drawing of my subjects - I understand now how this approach indulges my love for color and can ignore the significance of value relationships). I have a greater range of values in this study (once I found the horse shape inside the underpainting, I teased her out, then located a reference for the specific light and shadow planes), and can see as I push and pull chroma in the darks/lights how the piece shifts. What a great exercise to get me to see the relationship between value and the interplay of color. Thanks, Felicia!

absolutely love this. That little pink bud on the left could not be more perfect!

I'm going to try to come/fit it in. Am supposed to be doing taxes, but we all know how exciting that is. I've been doing some Sky Bears - here's one I feel is finished, one that needs some color adjusting, and a third problem child