Creative Slump?

I've been working on various aspects of the upcoming exhibition at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum on Harker's Island, NC and have nearly finished.  All I have left to do is to take my paintings to the Museum so it's a relief to get most of the preparations behind me.

I think I've mentioned it before but after a marathon painting period, I sometimes go into a creative slump where I don't want to see another canvas, paintbrush or tube of paint!  Well, it's happened this time too but I was determined to keep painting through it.

We planted a new-to-us variety of that old Southern staple, okra, and it's gorgeous!  Really, it's gorgeous.  It's a beautiful variegated maroon color with bits of lime green in it.  It's not often that mundane garden veggies inspire me to paint them but did I mention that this okra is gorgeous?

That's why I chose a few pods of it to try to paint through this slump.  I know I haven't done it justice.  Reds are notoriously hard to shade properly - if you add white, you get pink instead of a lighter shade of red.  You can supposedly add yellow to lighten but that doesn't always work either so I just did the best I could with it.  It was a learning piece and I wasn't expecting a masterpiece so wasn't all that disappointed when I didn't achieve one!

Another reason I wanted to paint is that I received some new paint from an order I placed a while ago.  I've been painting in alkyd oils for a while now and I really like them so I ordered some replacement (& new) colors in various brands so I could compare them.  They only just arrived yesterday so I'll let you know what I think about them in another post after I've had time to play with them a bit more.

In the meantime, I'll be in the studio painting!