Progress on Nicholas' Shop

I've been trying to make time to work on this painting
and it has proved difficult with my current calendar...

I was able to sit down the other night and fiddle
with the lower left-hand corner of my sketch... 

originally, I imagined it to be silhouetted, but
decided to use the space to showcase more 'things'.

Here is the 'Before'...                                                       This is the 'After'...

You'll notice the open shelving and odds 'n' ends filling them up...

... This alteration took about 30 minutes...

The other day I was blessed with some time to actually paint!

Painting this 2" x 3" royal portrait took about an hour...

Painting the 1" x 1.5" vintage Parisian postage stamp 

and the 1.25" x 2.25" oval folk art style house design

took another hour...

And yes, a magnifying glass came in handy for the smaller details of these works!

Finding bits and pieces of time here and there,

other areas were painted... and I developed a soft turquoise for the walls...

The following reflects the efforts of four and half more hours:

I'm begin to build in the light from the window, deepening some areas 

and keeping others areas lighter... I will adjust things as the painting progresses.

More tweaking and tightening up of details (shadows, highlights, etc) are necessary 

and in the works... There are some parts of the sketch that I'm reconsidering now...

Stay tuned to see how that settles out!

You can begin to see how long some paintings can take 

- this one is 6.5 hours so far! -

I'm constantly thinking, adjusting, adding, taking away...

that is why I sometimes find it enjoyable to take a quick break

from these bigger pieces to paint up a 30 minute 'doodle'!

Hope you find time in your day to do something you love!

~ It's back to 'play' for me! 

Need to splash my brushes into their favourite puddles of paint

and continue my progress on Nicholas' shop!

♥ Cath-