The result doesn't reflect the effort i put into the project. Failure means moving on, and trying again.

This was so challenging because of leaning how to work with acrylics. If someone interrupted me while painting I would find my paint dried and have to mix colors again.my wet pallet cover would not close tight enough and the paint would not stay workable I"m pretty sure it will get easier to get the right combination of colors and consistancy of wetness after a lot of practice. I reallyappreciated learning how  our teacher explained the color mixing and how certain colors worked together producing the best effect. Does it get easier the moree you use acrylics.(I'm used to water color) I love the intense colors with acrylic, and creating the shimmer effect the shimmer effect. any advice from someone who is used to acrylics?

This bird took me so many corrections and painting over, not as easy as Jane makes it look! The main challenge was amount of water in the brush and keeping the lines and dots small and straight enough. I really enjoyed the challenges and patient voice of Jane guiding us through. Thank you very very much!!

That is the 7th head painted of the bird and 4th wing so I am learning a lot and need to take more time to figure out the color of the paint needed. I cannot say I am a fan of the AQUASH brushes as there is water all the time from the brushes. Even after I get water off and then paint, more water to come. I started taking the brush off the rest of the holder just get some color without watering the paper. Lots to learn! Thanks for very informative lessons and I look forward to tackling the cardinal...wings closed right!?! By the way, your work at Cornell's Lab is beautiful!

I learned so much.  Thank you for helping me re-start my art - it used to be fun, I just got out of the mood for the last 10-20 years, so this was perfect to help me with a focused project.  It took me days, lol, I started too dark on my underpainting and had to overpaint some things.  I like my tail and body the best, they were not as over-worked as the head and wings.  I still think the head looks a bit too much like fur, I even tried a smaller brush, which helped a bit.  I like Jane's vibrant colors, my mind kept going to the photo and trying to capture the depth of shadows and I got things a bit muddied, especially under the left wing coverts.  I am learning to use the water brushes and stay-wet palate, it does help to not use my squirt bottle and jar of water so much.  I appreciate the detailed color mixing, however, when I would go to the next video, I would forget the mixtures I used (should have written them down, as Jane suggested) - I rinsed off my palate sheet each day, I didn't complete every lesson in one sitting, and when I would come back the next day the paints on the palate would not be as fluid as straight from the bottle.  I will never look at a barn swallow the same again!

Wow, what a project! I learned so much on this one. I'm waiting for my fluid acrylics to arrive so I painted this one in gouache. I will paint this again using the acrylics once they're here. I got a little lost on the left wing's overlaps - I ended up lifting too much of my pencil lines on that one. Overall, I'm super pleased with how this turned out and with the colors I was able to mix based on what I had available.

I learned a ton! Short in the body, wide in the head, a coffee spill and some tentative muddy paint here and there. I can't wait to try again on another bird, cardinal, here I come!

challenging!  Certainly not perfect.  Particularly problematic for me is the translucent effect of the wing/tail feathers.

Wow that was intense!  But I'm so happy with how it turned out.  I can see now the feet are misplaced and the vent area is too short.  The most challenging thing was the overlapping feathers.  Excited to try my hand at the Cardinal next.  Alisha