Beautiful! Looks relaxing. I am hoping to get into a groove. Gessoed some papers and canvases.
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@sheralmyst Good luck with it! Nice to have some substrates ready to go.
@stryker99 Glad to hear you are on a roll!
@Sir_oops How’s it going for you these days?
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Hmmm…I am not quite satisfied with this one but not hating it either. I will hang it up and keep looking at it
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That is beautiful! 
I always find something that needs to be resolved if I don’t look at a piece for a day or so. It’s like , "Why didn’t I see that glaring thing yesterday. lol
But no one else notices it the way I do.
In my view that piece is lovely!. What size is it?
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Wow! I would make a portrait of that on a square format substrate… maybe 12x12". Can’t wait to see what you do with it. 
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Good Lord sheral, you’re up early! I thought I was the rare ETARCian who got up before five, on occasion. 
I guess I can see why you dislike your painting, if the whole thing is too light, depending on image accuracy. Though I’m with TE, I think it’s lovely.
Well, back to the scifandrathro… trouble trouble trouble 
And then when that’s in the can, maybe… maybe… some arts. And hopefully music.
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It’s more an issue of me finding what makes me happy. 
I just did not feel a lot of joy over it although, I was not really upset by it either. My mushroom paintings make me smile and just feel good as I work them…I am still experimenting. 
So funny because as I was typing that, Leave it to Beaver was on the TV. Beaver was upset about how little he knows about life and how little he has seen and done and a girl is writing his auto biography(for him) for school so his brother Wally commented," Gee, Beave. Just take your life and triple space it. " 
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Awake at 4 am almost every single day. However, I usually remain in bed and read, check the news, and engage in whatever community mission currently running in Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. Don’t hate me. 
I refuse to officially ‘get up’ for the day before 6 am.
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That should be on a T-shirt! 
I would like to say something about how we respond to the art shown here. I would prefer it if people would not “critique” the work unless the artist has specifically asked for help or critiques.
I particularly liked (and felt a little twinge of jealousy) of the lightness and airiness of @sheralmyst 's landscape piece. My own work tends to end up much darker than I want, possibly due to my strange eyesight.
Sometimes our preferences (also opinions) around art can seem like “rules”, but they are not. The only “rule” I know of is that only the painting (or other artwork) itself can teach us how to create it; a conversation, a dance, between the author/artist and the work.
Creating arts is a life-long learning situation. We are never done with it (thank heavens). Each piece we create teaches us something that we can take to the next piece. Experimenting is a fundamental part of learning.
I have pulled out old paintings from decades ago (ones that bothered me at the time and didn’t know how to resolve ) and suddenly I could see what the piece needed in order to finish it well. That happened to me just a few months ago with an abstracted landscape I had painted in acrylics about ten years ago, and even had framed. I hung it at the end of a hallway so that I saw it every day, There was a lot to like about it, but something about it really bugged the hell out of me!
One day I just couldn’t stand it any more. I squeezed out some of my primaries onto to an Ice cream container lid, grabbed a large brush and began repainting the left-hand side of it (it is an18x24-inch canvas panel in portrait orientation) still in its frame, still on the wall, so that the elements were farther away from the left hand edge of the canvas.
I can’t tell you the feeling of relief and pleasure that gave me.
But if I had been smart I would have kept it in the studio, turned to the wall until I could see it with fresh eyes. 
Sometimes it is a small thing, usually something that draws the eye way and fixates it, or requires a softer edge, or a value change in part to bring a thing into harmony, sometimes it it is a larger thing, like with the painting I described above. The elements in that we so squeezed up against the side of the frame that looking at it evoked a feeling of uncomfortable tension in the viewer. And the viewer would not understand why that was the case.
Anyway, I’m blathering on here, when I just wanted to say something about being careful about critiquing. And if you feel you must, perhaps take it to a private chat?
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Well I don’t mind some critique. I find the way others view art to sometimes be revealing of human nature. For me, if I enjoyed the process, then I am happy with it. We all have different tastes. Not everyone wants to own a Van Gogh. I do. or listen to Beethoven. I do.
In the past, my paintings always turned out dark as well. Always attributed it to my mood. 
I am happy with the lightness of that last pic but just did not get the satisfaction from it that I would like to get. That just tells me that I have not quite found my niche. I will get there.
And you are not blathering @TravelEcho . Insightful. 
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Well, I could not take it any more. Had to have a new digital camera. Did not want to spend a ton of money so I grabbed a Kodak PixPro. Not bad. Not wonderful. But it communicates with my PC so that is a plus. True colors or at least much better than what I was getting with my phone which makes things pretty but too vibrant.
I love the gnarly stump this shroom is growing on but not the tons of creepy crawlies taking a vacay on the thing.
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Thank you, and
Congrats on the new camera!
As far as the bugs go, “artistic license”. 
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I think your painting was missing mushrooms. They are probably in there, just too small to see. 
I get the same thing, like I am searching for something in my art. Explorers, the lot of us. Maybe it’s more helpful to tell the artist how that piece makes one feel, rather than a critique. I feel peace and determinedness looking at your picture. I see a little black silhouette at the end of the path. I read that as a person, walking away. Or maybe it’s the mushrooms talking. I like it. It’s funny, everyone I showed these journal studies to has liked the one I liked the least the best.
Anywho, I take pictures of shrooms, Lichen and moss too.
I had planned on using them for ref in concept art and game textures. I am not a great photographer, but my phone does a decent job. I have a lot of blurry ones.
Working in the journal is intermittent. I end up sketching a lot in ink with just a clipboard and copy paper, drawing cartoons. Lost my brush pen. It will probably turn up.
I was going to paint a bunch of people from photos, then played around instead. The tractors are from one day old photos I took. My wrist watch is the second live one, got to do more live ones. Still life, architecture, things that don’t move.
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For centuries, people have argued about what is and is not Art.
Some people take a literal view. Anything that is man-made is Art - sharing the roots of the word with “artisan”, “artifice” and “artificial”. Others point out that found objects can be Art - an attractive piece of driftwood, or even a public urinal. It doesn’t necessarily need to be man-made (although then we could argue that the human intervention lies in the choice of object, and its presentation).
Some have said that only things made for love of creation can be Art, and that things made for money cannot be.
Some have said that if you make one thing, that may be Art, but if you make lots of the same thing, that may be craft, or industry, but it’s not Art.
One of my favourite arguments came from the author Tom Robbins, who said (I paraphrase):
“Art is what happens when you want something to exist, and you know that it will never exist, unless you make it exist”.
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I love that! Wish I had started a journal ages ago…and aren’t fungi just the best? Something about them makes them special. Little ecosystems that pop up overnight. And moss is so soft and cool to the touch. I have found that photographing them in the early morning or late evening is the best. Sometimes, the sun washes out the details on them. So I try to get up at first light and scan my yard. They are gone so fast…
and yes, there is a person walking away and towards the mountains in the background. I have never really been a landscape artist, in fact, I have not really been an artist at all for many years now… 
so I am learning from scratch all over again. Which is actually kinda fun. I would really like to paint outside but the heat is still searing here. So I will likely move away from landscapes for now.
I am envious of your journal…and actually, with how quickly I can now paint my mushrooms, it is something I should look into starting. 
People are something I have trouble with. Your loose work makes me jealous. Very nice! And I love the machinery! There is plenty of that type of subject matter around me, I may have to tap into that.
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hmmmm…now there is an idea! 
There was a big debate a few years back over, the Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade. He made stacks of prints of his work and then merely placed the highlights as a way of mass marketing his work. While the paintings were beautiful and made great jigsaw puzzles, did he cross a line?
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Been done.
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Well dang it! 
Too late on that one.
The argument over what is art is not new.
I think that is genius! (although also slightly disturbing)
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