Potato cairn, WIP

Potato cairn stage 1 and 2, oil on canvas panel, 10x8 in.

I allowed myself less time to paint last night, so I'm breaking up this piece into two sessions. Not having a bigger linen panel ready, I used a RayMar canvas panel that was sitting around - with the surface sanded down a little and a quick drying layer of paint scraped smooth over the canvas texture (I scraped with a palette knife, leaving paint in the little depressions).

I wanted a simpler exercise in light and dark, and a setup with potatoes seemed right. And I realized the previous night that I tend to get too wet with medium early on, so focusing on the light I thought would also slow me down and keep things dry longer. I stacked the potatoes like this because the more I thought about them the more they felt like stones, and what can you do with stones (non-violently) that is more primeval than stacking them in unnatural ways?