Here is my latest attempt at oil painting. Keeping with the theme of trying to avoid overly complicated subjects, I went with a pear. Partly because I love pears and also because it sounded easy.

I can always find things to pick apart with my art, but all things considered I was pretty happy with several things about this one. I liked the way I mixed the colors and did a decent job at getting the right colors in the right places. And although I think I overdid the brush strokes just a bit, overall I like that too.

The colors were made by mixing the 3 primaries (kind of), plus white.  I also used Phthalo Green – but not for green. It makes a really nice black/gray with mixed with crimson (the shade of red I used to dull the green of the pear). I still haven’t wrapped my head around making a neutral gray by mixing red, green, and white but somehow it works!