Hot Blueberry Muffins

Mmmmm, just like grandma use to make.  Delicious blueberry muffins.  These happen to be sitting on the table, but you can't have them they are mine.

I started out to paint something just a little different.  You see lot of painting of trees, and flower, and pets and people, but how many do you see of muffins?  I know, I know, your gonna say its just a still life like a bowl of fruit, or something, but is it really?  I really like painting things that not everyone else paints.  From the moment I saw this picture,  I knew I was going to paint it.  I didn't really know how I was going to do it, but I knew I was going to.

What I did was look at what color the muffin tops were, and develop my color palette from there.  The tops were gold, and brown and a really warm earthy yellow.  I decided on transparent orange oxide, yellow ochre, raw umber and van dyke brown.  The brown crusty parts are really just orange oxide.  and the in between parts are mostly yellow ochre.  Their is an under layer of raw umber and yellow ochre.  The muffin cup is mostly raw umber. I needed to make it similar to the top, but different enough that you could tell it was paper.  I tied it all together with a light yellow background and a few blueberries in the foreground.

If you want a more detailed description, you can watch the video below.  Thanks for taking the time to view it, I hope you like it, I had a blast painting it.

Woman on Rock

Well, still trying to learn to draw people.  Took this from a simple picture of a woman laying on a rock. I think i got a little good and a little bad, like lots of my paintings.  The bottom half of her is too big, or perhaps the top is too small.    I tried to make her look 3D but I'm not sure i really got it.  There are parts of her that look 3D but all in all, she still looks flat.  On top of that, it looks like both her legs are at the same depth.  I like the shading on the bottom of her torso (what would be her oblique).  I tried several techniques to make her look more roundish and 3D.  First I put on the basic skin color, then I made the bottom and just a touch of the top blueish, then put some red in the middle.  in painting Blue things look further away, red looks closer.  I think I need stronger values.  Then I put shading on her limbs, took out some paint on where I thought light would be hitting, and finally shading under her.  All those together should have given her a more 3D look.

I think i just need more practice.