
I tried a quick paint during lunch for the first time, and made lots of useful mistakes. Here's what I learned:
1) I need some sort of table and chair. Working on the ground sucks. You can't control your brush, your paints get all sorts of dirt and crap in them, and you're uncomfortable so you're not focusing completely on the painting. Bad times.
2) I need to keep away from the elements as much as possible. Like a tard, I set up in windy spot right next to a fountain. So on top of the wind flipping around all of my supplies, I got an intermittent spray of chlorine water all over my painting. Argh! Again, this shit takes so much concentration for me that any little annoyance takes away from the end product.
3) I need to block in big areas with a big brush and lots of paint. The huge water and building shapes caught me off guard here, and I ended up hatching away at it with watered down goauche strokes rather than globbing down a bunch of bold strokes like I should have.
4) I picked too complex of a scene for the amount of time I had. 45 minutes to block in and paint this scene was totally overwhelming for me. I need to pick simpler stuff for lunch studies and get more into how the light and shadow colors work on just a couple things.
and most of all:
5) I rushed the painting. I started putting down marks without fully considering what they'd look like. That's a very bad habit I have in general that I need to break.
I'll try something else tomorrow... maybe a simple still life?