"The Lost Mine", oil on panel, 8x10

I just bought quite a few small panels a week ago and decided to just paint and paint, not to worry about the outcome, as I truly believe that as a painter, my job is to become as good as I can possibly be.

When I started this painting at my friend Gloria's house, I thought I would do an abstract study from a photo I took at the Superstition Mountain. Using a big brush, I still came up with more detail than I intended to. But I was happy with the result and learned a lot during the process.

There are quite a few things I can say from doing this painting. First I found that the quality of paints really helps save time, energy and the resulting look of a painting. So, try to get better oil paints if you can. Second, look at the subject matter (if it's a photo), from far away, or in your computer file using a thumbnail view. It helps you decide if the composition is interesting enough to warrant the effort to paint. To me, the interesting composition involves good stretch of values, different masses and their distribution, lines and dots.