Joaquin Sorolla study, Raimundo de Madrazo in his Paris garden

After sending the past few weeks focusing on drawing, I realised that I felt like I had lost all my ability to paint. I feel like art can be like that sometimes, level up in one area while the others decrease. I decided it's best if I can try to keep to my drawing practices (since I am still very much lacking) but still spend some time in the day to paint and train myself that way. The past few days I have spent around 20-30 minutes on this study. But before I even thought about putting brush to canvas I spent about 15 minutes analysing the image. At first when you look at the image, you think. Oh, a man in a grey suit! When when you look closer at the jacket you can really analyse all the many colours. Oranges, blues, purples, and yellows! But the more I looked into this piece I realised everything was a giant lot of colour! 

So i laid down a general wash or purples and yellows and got to work on the sketch. I spent around 20 minutes on the sketch (as you can probably see) and started to map out where I perceived the shadow and light to be. I wish I had spent more time on the sketch however because while painting i spent a lot of time correcting the proportions and angles (even though the finished piece still is very awkward). I think for my next study I will spend around an hour just mapping everything out so it saves me time in the long. I started off with clip studio paints gouache brush but then I realised i should probably try and try new brushes, so i then tried out the oil paint brush (exciting i know). I am so used to using hard and soft round that using new brushes feel a little strange to me, I once heard that you should learn to master sot and hard round before you play with texture brushes, however I don't think I am that good with hard and soft brush yet despite getting feedback saying i should try texture. I am ultimately afraid I will loose whatever structure I have in my piece. 

Something I have also realised with my painting is that i am afraid to go too light and I am also bad at using darks, I once heard advice saying that when you paint you should avoid going below 10% and above 90% since things are rarely that bright or dark in life. However I think maybe this painting maybe photo manipulated since some of the bright are really really close. However I should learn better colour relationships and get better at using values. I need to understand lighting a lot more so I can understand the value shift. I really liked doing this and I found it relaxing to paint as I cool down 

I think next time I will focus on the structure and proportion more.  I really really want to focus on accuracy and try and really learn from these master studies instead of just painting for the sake of painting, which is how I used to do master studies ..