After trying to gesso over the doilie zippo…..didn’t work. Tried white paint and forget the gesso bubbled up, two strikes….I cut out the candy box with a blade. HMMM….now I have a 2D candy box? lol. I need to figure something out. I think I will place it on another work area and keep trying different looks [different color background paper] to see what works. Here are a few options in the following pictures. Drop an email if you see something that works. I am feeling the fruit background……..Oh yeah! Now if I can find paper that looks like a vinyl tablecloth….

Update: So far the realism is good, but the doilie forget it. I never have this much trouble with a piece….I am going to gesso out the doilie and take it from there. Maybe add a tea cup? Not sure, but I know the doilie isn’t working. I should not of added the negative first [blue]; I was in a hurry….never a good idea to just put down color without a plan! Lesson learned.

This is where I started to get myself in trouble with too much color pencil. I broke the golden rule and used gold metallic pencil for the reflective candy foil. It’s not appropriate for watercolor and it does mess up the reflective quality of the watercolor itself. I took out all the metallic gold pencil with my mulitlith eraser and here it is at this point. I think it needs a bit more reflective-ness with watercolor yet? As far as the doilie, IDK? Just might cut out the candy box, glue to another board and start over. Never done that before, so it may come out like trash. I didn’t start the doilie off correctly with watercolor, I was in a hurry and put blue in as the negative space. Not exactly sure how I will approach this? AWE.So far this watercolor painting has taken me about four hours, maybe less. I started it in color pencil [the candy in the upper left], but I did not have Prisma color pencils at that time and the color pencils I was using were not the top of the line. I didn’t have chocolate type colors and even two toning I couldn’t get rich browns. Frustrated as I was when I started this I just picked up my watercolors and that’s the result so far. The doilie and candy box need to go back into a still life so I can continue and finish this painting. I believe I am going to pick up the Prisma colors and see how far I can take the realism. I will post pictures of the progress. So, please stayed tuned. Thanks.  I am also willing to take constructive criticism on how I can improve my site, so please feel free to email me. Important 101 perspective; the candy box is flat 2D and is sort of has a twisting to the box with the candy. I will shadow down the upper right corner and it should result in pushing back in space that corner. By highlighting the corner closest to the front it should come forward in space.

Okay, I used gold metallic for the darker golden foil sections, took the yellow box back into space with purple [yellow and purple are compliments of each other]. Used canary yellow to brighten the foreground.  The doilie is going to be a challagne……I am so geared towards realism I know myself well enough that It will take a few hours to create the doilie details. I am going to use warm tone grays to begin the thread loops.