10″ x 10″ oil on canvas

I have to admit that the mixture still does not appeal to me! I just cannot imaging what peanut butter and jelly would taste like together – I know I now have the ingredients and could try it but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I do love peanut butter and to me its best eaten straight out of the jar with a spoon! I try not to have peanut butter in the house because an open jar tends to be an empty jar and I am the only one thats eaten any of it. Already this jar is half empty and I only opened it this morning. I do prefer crunchy peanut butter over smooth, something about a little crunch amongst all that creamy smoothness. Nothing like piece of hot buttered toast dripping with butter and a thick layer of peanut butter. Everyone seems to be painting PB&J so here is mine.

Slightly thrown mid-painting to discover that what I thought was turps (ok it smelled a little strange) was something completely different and it had removed all the varnish off my paint brush handles! Horrible gooey mess! I’m trying to loosen up more but I’m still not quite there though using larger brushes is definitely helping – I just need to lock the little skinny ones up so I can’t get hold of them.

One thing that I have realised that I am not doing and that I am sure would make an enormous difference is putting into practice what Michael has taught me of really looking at colours and assessing the warmth or coolness of them. I wonder at what point you can be spontaneous with your paint and still manage to capture those values in your work.

Something else that is challenging me is how to do an underpainting in umber and still get clean colours when you paint over the underpainting. It seems to be very hard to get anything other than various shades of mud.