Koiled

     Okay, so my mom commissioned me to paint a picture for her birthday this year.  The only criteria was that it had to be full of warm fall colors.  I really wanted to paint a picture of a forest path with a woman's figure fading into the haze of the darkening forest path.  This was by far my hardest painting to date and in fact I have taken a month break from painting to mentally recover.  The forest painting took me about four weeks of fairly dedicated painting to have it ready in time for my moms birthday which was at the beginning of this month.  The greatest lesson that I took away from this painting was that it is okay to be discouraged with the way a painting is coming out, but that I must push on and continue to work at the painting until I am happy with the outcome.  I learned very quickly that the devil was in the details.  I was not really happy with the painting after I had blocked all of the colors onto the canvas, it felt very flat to me.  It was not until I started adding detail after detail that the picture grew in depth and contrast.  In the end I was really happy with the way it all turned out, even my fading lady met my expectations.