still life painting can go die in a fire

I take it back. Tiny painting is the worst and still lifes have superseded board games as my natural enemies. I am going to start a miniature bonfire. And then back over it with a miniature car. (But not with the truck - even though it is miniature, as modern trucks go - because it has developed a gas leak and I am made of flammable material.)

I tried painting a flower, and it came out looking like a smashed egg. So I wiped the canvas and tried painting a tea cup - which also came out looking like a smashed egg. Mushing blobs of oil around on the ends of hair-tufted sticks is hard. We are ridiculous, ridiculous animals.

Instead of upending the table and quitting, I am resentfully sitting and watching youtube videos on alla prima painting, thinking hateful thoughts about tea cups and flowers. (Shut up, pear. Don't talk to me, beautiful cup.) I have begun to suspect that jumping into painting without looking up how to do it first might have been where I went wrong. Among other things, it turns out you are supposed to pre-mix your colors in neat little gradated rows instead of smashing everything angrily onto the canvas.

This is not how you paint

So I've ordered larger canvases and some color/proportion tools, and to hell with tea cups for now; I'll start by focusing on alla prima figure and portrait painting, since that's what blows my kilt up.

Plans for a basement art studio are taking form, because I've trashed the dining room table and it makes me super uncomfortable. In a world overrun by children and cats and chickens, household order is all that stands between me and a one-way march into the woods to become a witch. Pinterest, here I come.