Painting is hard. One of the most difficult problems with art is that we try to recreate exactly what we see. But painting exactly what we see is almost impossible (even for very good artists). If you’re off by even a little bit, a nose becomes a pancake and a bird becomes roadkill. What great artists learned a long time ago is that you don’t paint a nose or a bird, you paint shapes, angles, colors and contrast. With this painting, I’m not going to show you the finished work. It’s a trap, because you will want to try to match that. With this project, we’re going to free ourselves from trying to paint something specific. We’re going to focus on shapes, colors and contrast. We’re going to focus on how the paint goes on the canvas. Although I’m not showing you the final picture, I have some images below to use as inspiration.