Summer means blueberries and strawberries, my favorites. My mom’s been bugging me for a few years to paint her some berries to adorn her walls, and since they’ll be moving into a new house this fall, I thought I’d poke at some ideas.

I always try and remind myself that when a first attempt doesn’t come out the way I had hoped, there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t revisit the same subject again and again until I get a satisfying result. the only real constraint (albeit a big one) is time.

My first attempt, a (6×6 oil on board), came out a bit darker than I’d hoped: I was trying to literally interpret the colors and lighting in my (admittedly poor) reference photo. It came out very dark, and I wasn’t a fan.

I had another square canvas ready to go, so during another session, I roughly sketched out some bright shapes in phthalo blue. I liked the composition so I continued filling it in with bright blues and yellows.

I think this second painting is way more fun to look at than the first, but still not the right one to gift to my mom. So I’ll take what I learned both times and apply it to yet another iteration, and someday perhaps I will become an expert on painting blueberries!