As it turned out, I finished the Protea before Christmas.. it didn't take much longer to paint in the leaves and tweak the overall balance of darks and lights that I like to do at the end.
I feel very efficient knowing how long I spend on a painting.. I use a Toggl.com account to track my time and it's been extremely helpful for me to guesstimate future projects and deadlines and I seem to get on with it and not fluff round so much when the timer is on, it just doesn't seem to rub off into other areas of my life. I can waste away plenty of possible painting hours doing lots of other "things", some that need to be done but just don't show much for the time they took out of your day, and other things that, if the truth be told, was just me procrastinating.
Toggl says the Protea took 59 hours of painting. It didn't feel that long and I enjoyed it very much.. so much so that I think there might be a few more paintings from me along the same lines this year...but bigger, much bigger!!
So, here are a couple of photos of the stages the leaves went through. I am sorry, I keep forgetting to take photos as I go along and so you don't get quite the "step by step" look I was aiming for, but you get the general idea of my process.
So, Happy New Year to you all and may your 2016 be creative and productive!
:)
the finished leaves.
the finished painting... off to it's new home tomorrow.