still learning

Originally I wasn't gonna share this painting here:



Allow me to explain why I changed my mind.

I usually share my pencil doodles on my social media, often to let people see that I don't always have a finished idea in mind, or work to make something good for people to see. It's in the spirit of “this is what it looks like when I hack around”. But my paintings? Usually I only show those when I feel like I've come up with something that people might enjoy looking at.

This wasn't one of those. This was more of a gouache doodle [and an excuse to test-drive the new Pébéo gouache set I recently got]. I posted it as such, primarily to let people see that I often have no idea what I'm doing.

( Here's what was going through my mind while I did this. )

In my experience, paintings that move away from traditional realism aren't often met with much approval. But — to my surprise — I got a few vocal likes on this one, mostly saying that they really liked the colours. One lady said that if she had this, she would frame it and hang it up! So I got her address and gave it to her.

My point is that I have no idea what people are going to like, or not like. I'm tempted to give up trying to guess.