I started with the swatching exercises because this paint is really new to me. I had a small Holbein set of primary colors but didn't play with them really. So Alanna has motivated me to explore AND to buy the Turner Japanesque colors, which is what I am playing with here. I LOVE their texture.

**Latest Update: I found a fabulous set of the Japanesque colors with HUGE discount, so I snapped them up and swatched them.

 

These little exercises were SO helpful in discovering what this paint does and how it flows, how much water, all that good stuff.

 I was surprised by how transparent the Deep Red is. J. Dark Blue is pretty opaque as is the J. Pale Blue (which impressed me because it's a lighter color).

First still-life - a little pottery piece, work in progress. I ended up not liking the background color and got to experience the joy of just painting over it!

First finished still life - 

SECOND Still Life - Bouquet of flowers (from a reference photo by my daughter). And again, I started out with a background that ended up not making me happy, which then made me not want to work on the piece for several days...

So... while I really liked the gold...

I painted over a lot of it - but I left gold around the flowers peeking through and painted the cream very rough and quick for more texture. The flowers feel very stiff to me (I haven't solved that in my painting yet but it's probably because I keep going for too much detail and realism...) but I'm really happy with the pottery vase and the piece as a whole.

Onward to the final still life project!! COMING SOON!