Painting Workshop

Today I took a workshop on painting with water soluble oils. Wow... oils are *really* different from acrylics! I kept expecting them to act like acrylics, and they didn't. (They had both advantages and disadvantages.) I didn't like my painting at first, but it's growing on me as I get some "distance" from it:

Sorry about the glare on these photos... the oils still aren't dry (of course... they're oils!), so I didn't want to move them to try to get a location with enough light that I could take photos without flash. (Assuming one existed... this *is* winter, and the sun does set early.)

I didn't paint the tiger lilies. Or, more accurately, I painted them several times, ending up with crap each time. The instructor painted the ones seen here, and demonstrated how to "fix" one of my roses. The rest is all mine, although I did make some changes based on suggestions from the instructor. (Oh, yeah, he did tone down some of my whitish flowers, although I painted back over a few of them.)

For a comparison, here's my mom's painting:

Mom took a different approach to not being able to paint the tiger lilies.

We were at the same table, and so had pretty similar views of the still life. The arrangement of the still life looked a bit better from where the instructor was standing, but the lilies looked out of place no matter what. (Who puts lilies just poking out of a squat little jar like that?) Part of the problem is that the flowers were artificial and pretty crappy... probably not good quality to begin with, and ancient.

The bottle that says "BOLS" on it is some sort of bizarre wine bottle. I wish I had had the same idea that R had... she changed the label to something much nicer looking.

I haven't decided yet what I'll do with my painting. I forgot to sign it before cleaning my palette and brushes... but then I'm not sure I want to sign it with the lilies being done by the instructor. (Mom thinks I should paint over the lilies anyway, since they don't fit with the rest of the painting. I wonder if my oils, last used in 1989, are still good?)