This actually started out as a painting of a tree on a hill. When I was done painting it, I wasn’t very happy with it, so I left the tape border on for about a week while I thought about what I actually wanted to paint. You can see a little bit of the original painting where the paint bled under the tape.

I only used black & white here because I wanted to focus exclusively on values (light & shadow) instead of colors. The paint is actually slightly bluer than what you see here, even though I didn’t mix in any blue to the black & gray tones. It’s such a subtle shade that I think it might be part of the black pigmentation, and not the colors of the previous painting showing through.

This is the sixth acrylic painting I did, and the first that I actually liked. I didn’t actually set out to paint a sunset or clouds – I originally intended to paint a galaxy using yellow/orange/red/black. I didn’t work, and I started painting clouds instead.

I made a ton of mistakes with this painting – not using enough water, not blending the colors well enough, and not having a plan on what I was going to paint. Unlike the previous paintings I did, I wasn’t frustrated with this one when I finished it. I liked it – and still do like it – because I this was when I first started to get the hang of acrylics. All of my later paintings are much improved compared to the first five.