I tried to follow Carol Marine here - didn't really do it, beyond the small format (6x8) but this is probably one of the better paintings I've done. The shaker top is a bit warped looking, but other than that it worked well. This was one of those times that I pushed through the doubt and left it alone for about a week. I came back and added just few things - the red bits of color, the shimmer in the shadow, and a few other things.
A big challenge on this painting was the silver shaker top against the black background. My brain told me that the black background was much darker than the silver top, but if I really looked I realized that, in reality, this wasn't true. This happens a lot in painting - the battle between your intellect telling you how things are supposed to be, and your eyes seeing what really is.
