The Completed Hat Painting

"Dick's Hat"
2012
oil on canvas
12 x 12 inches

My painting instructor, Dean returned from vacation this week, and we had our first painting session in 3 weeks today! I was so happy to be painting with him again. I had all intentions to paint at my house while he was away, but alas, *things* kept getting in the way. This was one of the main reasons why I was so excited to take lessons from Dean - it enabled me to put our sessions in my calendar to ensure that I would make the time to paint. :)

I had two paintings that I had started on, and was hoping to work on today.

The first was the hat painting that I had started last month. I had worked on it a couple of times, and was pretty pleased with it, but it wasn't quite finished. When I brought it in to Dean to show him, he had some great suggestions on how it could be improved.

The main thing was that my light source was not obvious - which it wasn't. I was painting this in a room in my house that gets a lot of natural light (which is good) but the light comes from all around. I'm not able to control the light as much as I would like for still-life paintings. (which i've never had to think about before!)

So today, I brought the painting, along with Dick's hat, and with some more helpful tips from Dean, completed it today!

I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The shadows really add a lot of depth and interest to the painting that weren't there before.

here's a review (which is very helpful for me to review the process) of the different stages of the hat painting:


Day One


Day Two


Day Three - The completed Hat Painting!