A few weeks ago while painting my first still life, I began thinking of my second painting. Go figure – HA! In the process of figuring out what to paint, I accumulated several Goodwill artifacts and various fabric elements to help for future projects. None of those objects from Goodwill were selected for still life #2 … I’ll savor those glass items for later.

On Monday of this week I began mixing paint – rather than draw out the still life. Painting is a time hog (more so than riding my bike which I’m still doing). Prior to mixing paint, I spent three hours preparing the still life set – which included re-building the stage, adjusting the lights, and adjusting the studio.

In a later post I’ll show a photo of the palette for this painting. I’ve not counted the total number of colors but I suspect I’m well beyond 50. Mixing paint was time intensive – it took a total of 9 hours. Earlier this afternoon I drew the still life in water color pencil to prepare for laying the paint. In the attached gallery images you’ll see that the first attempt to organize the layout failed. I erased it and started over. Over the weekend I’ll complete the painting – and I anticipate a total of 12 additonal hours. The total – 25 hours – makes the painting worth $875.  More “whew!”