It’s December, and here is the latest submission for my monthly painting goal. I may need to provide a bit of waffling and excuse-making to explain this, but first, the painting(s):

For this month’s installment, I offer three (3) smaller paintings. Yes, three images of this same broken teapot. I hope to conclude my teapot phase now, and to never again paint this teapot.

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Do three small paintings satisfy your monthly goal? Well, it’s my goal, so I’m claiming that yes, they do.

But wait a minute, didn’t Teapot #1 show up last month, in November? Yes, yes, but I also painted “Pots ‘n Pans” in November, so I’m carrying that first teapot over for credit in this month.

Well, but didn’t you already write about Teapot #2 in a previous post? Yes already! And now I’m mentioning it again as part of this monthly goal.

My intent with this goal was to give myself motivation to keep painting – sort of like a steady push so that I wouldn’t run out of steam. And at the beginning of the year I needed it! I was slow, and my first few paintings took a long time. One painting a month was about all I could handle. But now, a year later, I find that I knock things out a bit faster. I’ve also discovered that I enjoy painting, and that I look forward to it! So when I finished November’s painting (Pots ‘n Pans), I just kept going.

I’ve talked about teapots #1 and #2 already, so I won’t rehash any of that. Teapot #3 (Emerald Teapot) will be part of my entry to the Webster Arts upcoming Emerald exhibition. They will be celebrating their 20th anniversary, and apparently emeralds are the correct gemstone for that occasion. So, one emerald teapot!

As usual, I painted this from a photo. That’s super helpful for getting perspective and proportions right. But for this painting, the colors and lighting are mostly from my imagination. For one thing, the darned teapot isn’t green in real life. Also, the light shining in from the left is a figment of my imagination.

I think the light looks pretty good! Like an actual sunbeam is shining in, dappling some of the leaves and casting nice shadows. I like the brightly lit green area on the right, with the pink highlights on the flowerpot. I’m less satisfied with the way the light falls on the teapot itself. I fooled around with it quite a bit, but I couldn’t get the highlights to look right. My photo was rather dim, and I guess my imagination couldn’t quite generate realistic lighting. 🙂

So that’s it for my first year of painting! I’ll summarize the year and wrap things up in my next post. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!