Starting a new oil painting at home

My oil painting instructor is away on vacation for a couple of weeks. I've been wanting to set my studio up at home and work on a painting on my own while he is away. I figure it'll be good practice. Since we're working on a still life (my vintage Raggedy Ann) during our sessions, I figured it would be good to work on another still life at home.

I decided to paint one of Dick's hats. See, when I first showed him phase one of my Raggedy Ann painting, he was very supportive but asked if every painting I was going to do would be Raggedy Ann. (he's not the biggest Raggedy Ann fan in the world, and really, I'm okay with that.)

So, I thought I'd paint something that he would like - I decided to paint one of his hats. I figured it would be an interesting enough subject, plus, hats like this remind me of Dick. He has several hats - probably the closest thing he has to a "collection".

I worked on this painting for probably a couple of hours today. It took me a little while to get my stuff together and get settled into my space, but I think the set up is pretty good.

I'm having a good time with it so far. This is just the base painting. I need to rework several areas, and reshape the hat itself a bit. Not bad for the beginning, though.

Stay tuned to see how it progresses. :)


the real hat with the painted hat


hat painting, day 1