Last Class

Even though I didn't get any sleep last night, I decided to go to my art class. It was the last class with the model posing. After ever single class with the model, I was amazed at how different it is painting with her instead of my reference photos. I know that I've been taking poor photographs but you never really realize just how bad they are until you're back in front of the live person.

There are still quite a few subtle problems. There's something wrong with the eye that I can't quite make out. There's also some problems in the mouth area. Unfortunately I don't really know what's wrong all I know is that something is wrong. I'm very happy with the painting from the neck down though. The dress is wonderful. The shadowed flesh of the back is also wonderful. I hadn't put the small shadow that fell between the shoulder blades before and she was starting to look humpbacked. The addition of that small shadow has made her appear slimmer. I'm also very happy with the hair as well. My teacher was pointing out that something was wrong with the ear's tone but, actually, I don't really see anything really wrong with it. I don't want it to really stand out.

My teacher was pointing out my lack of color in my mid-tones and my over usage of brown in the shadows without enriching the flesh tone that was making the painting appear not really dull and lifeless. I spent a lot of time correcting the flesh tones and enriching the shadows. The eye was giving me a great deal of trouble. She almost looks startled now.

I'm not sure whether or not I'll continue with it or not. I guess it depends on how well I can get the reference photos to come up on my laptop. One of the websites I've been reading mentioned that they always paint from a monitor when they use digital reference photos. And the explanation was very valid. Printing it is sort of like making a copy of a copy. You're becoming even one more degree removed from the best subject which is life. So instead of printing my reference photos I'm going to start dragging my laptop into my studio. If the photos work out well, I may continue with the minor corrections.

Tomorrow, I also plan on cleaning and organizing my studio. Again, a website I read said that a cluttered and chaotic space is not conducive to creativity. And of course, it seems very obvious, and it's very correct. I really want to organize it better and get rid of some things that don't belong there. I also have a decent sized collection of bottles and other still life subjects. They need to be put into one spot together. Right now they're all over the place. I also think I need to rearrange the studio so that I can more easily step back from my easel and so that I'm standing far enough away from my subject so that the lighting for my canvas and palette isn't interfering the subject's lighting. It's a very small room though so I'm not sure how much wiggle room I'll have.

Down with the Oak

In preparation for Hurricane Irene, Chris and I decided to bite the bullet and take down a diseased tree in our yard sooner than we anticipated. We have no idea where we're going to get the money for it but we figured it was better than leaving the tree up and having it come down on our kitchen or our neighbor's house. Although it coming down on our house probably wouldn't be so bad, I'd get a new kitchen :)

They were here at 6AM to take down most of the branches and that's 2 hours earlier than they usually start. They left a good portion of the trunk in place and then they had to go off to do another job. I really do appreciate the fitting this job in the way they are. I feel bad for the noise so early in the morning but, well, it's got to come down now. The left pretty early but they're back now to remove the rest of the trunk and grind down the stump.

I set up a lovely still life today with a red onion and a coffee glass. I don't think I'm going to paint it though because I love the composition and I really wanted it to be on a larger board and right now all I have are 5x5's. I'd really rather it be on a 6x6 at the smallest or even better an 8x8 but I just don't have those on hand right now. I have cheap crappy canvas boards but I want this one to go onto something better.

After many mistakes...

PRO
1) The color of the mug is spot on. I'd like to say it took a deep understanding of color to nail it just right but it's just caput mortem straight out of the tube. I experimented with some different color mixtures but nothing was coming close and when I mixed the caput mortem with some quinacridone red mixed in.
2) I love the way the rim came out.
3) The background color was a good choice. I like taking colors straight out of the tube and using them in the background because it isn't often that you get to use a color straight out of the tube and I do love naples yellow.

CON
1) It's crooked. I'm not sure how it's crooked or what's making it seem crooked but it is.
2) The highlights on the handle were very difficult and they still don't seem right to me but I'm not sure why.

LESSON
Changing the value of a color doesn't always mean adding white. I started painting the mug's mid-tones with the caput mortem mixed in with white and it looked so wrong. I mean like really wrong. That was when I discovered that mixing the quinacridone red made the value of the caput mortem lighter. The color of this mug was extremely difficult. The darkness of the color just made it very difficult to see the values in the mug. I also had a lot of difficulty reproducing the lighter mid-tones. I've also realized that I need to control the light in my studio better. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to do that but I have to do it. It's making things way harder for me than they need to be. All of the bouncing light is really making some things way more confusing than they need to be.

Mug #2

Technically this is mug painting #3. But I have fallen in love with the gessoboards to the point that I am going to redo the first mug in the series on a board; hence the renumbering.

I'm not going to go through my normal pro/con/lesson process right now as this is still a work in progress and may have to span a few days. I'm not going for super realistic here. I do want to keep it very very loose but the emblem in the middle is causing me serious headaches. My initial rough draw in was very very wrong. Even though I went over that initial sketch, it seems to still be in my head. And despite the fact that it's NOT on the board, I'm still painting like it is. So I think I may need to step away from this for a few minutes and clear my mind... after I go back into my studio and wipe off the emblem which is so crooked it's hurting my brain.

EDIT: Well after wiping out and redoing the emblem four times, I finally gave up. I am going to include the emblem but I'm going to wait for the painting to dry and redo it again. The emblem doesn't have a lot of contrast with the board so I'm having to paint in the mug color to really check to see if it's right which is a lot of work to keep removing and redoing. Plus I'm fighting against the wet edges as well. Letting it dry will remove some of the other challenges and will let me focus on getting the damned thing drawn in properly. I managed to get in the darks, the midtones and the lights painted onto the mug. There is a lot of reflective light and other reflections going on.

EDIT 2: Fiddled with the painting again. Ended up wiping out the handle... twice.

Next to last class

I knew the great night of sleep I got on Sunday night would come back to haunt me. I didn't fall asleep last night until around 6:30 in the morning. I did manage to drag myself out of bed around 9 and get to my art class. I thought it was going to be the last class and since I missed last week's class, I was worried about time constraints. Turns out that the model was out also and they had someone else so I actually didn't miss anything. And it turns out we're going to get one more week to make up for it which works out even better.

I tried to work on the painting from a picture I had taken with my phone but the camera on my phone isn't all that great so the picture was useless for any fine detail. It was good enough to block in some of the values, get a decent approximation of the skin tone and correct some drawing errors. I should have taken a picture of that stage but I completely forgot.

It all worked out so much better when I got back in front of the live model. The studio had the air turned up a little too high and she was cold so this time she put her sweater around her arms and it looked really nice so I decided to include it. I'm also happy that this painting is starting to move away from looking like a police sketch drawing and beginning to look like an actual individual. In the past my portraits tend to get stuck in that generic sort of stage. Yes they look like a human. Yes you can tell if it's male or female. But it looks like a person you saw out of the corner of your eye. It has no characteristics of the individual. I really need to get my teacher's advice on how to get farther away from that police sketch stage.

There is still a lot of fine tuning to do. I hope the pictures I got come out okay because this is not something that I'll be satisfied with after only one more session with the model. There are just too many little things all over the place that need to be adjusted.

Mug Series #2

Despite the leg pain, I decided to go ahead with my painting today. I didn't really know how standing would work but, surprisingly, I was able to handle it. I don't even really seem to be experiencing any fallout from it either. I think it may have helped my back pain a little.

Chris bought me this mug a few years ago. Back when we lived in Ithaca, there was this amazing shop downtown that sold all sorts of handmade unique items. Some of it was created by local artisans and craftspeople but some of it was imported from all across the country. These mugs with little animals on the bottom were some of my favorite items. I've only drank out of this thing once. And I cannot tell you how much it made me smile when I got 3/4 of the way down and I had frog eyes staring back up at me. I'd use it more often but the figure on the bottom means you can't stir anything in the mug.

PRO
1) I love the way the little frog in the middle came out. I obviously wanted it to be the focal point and I managed to paint it as the focal point.
2) This is the best drawn painting I've done so far.
3) I was able to stop and not overwork it. I really want to loosen up my painting style and I think I managed to do that here.

CON
1) The dots are on the mug and I was hesitant to include them in the painting. Without them, the mug looked very stark to me and uninteresting. But I'm not sure I like the mug with them either.
2) No matter how much I seemed to fiddle with it, the shadow under the mug's handle never really looked right. And it still looks a little off to me and I'm not really sure why.
3) The last mug painting was a white mug also and it came out more looking like a cream colored mug. And while I think you can definitely tell that this is a white mug, I still found the white challenging. Creating the proper value in the lighter areas was difficult. I was always thinking they were too light but when I darkened them, the mug started to look like it was grey. But when I left the values light, highlights didn't contrast well.

LESSON
I'm going to be standing up from now on. It doesn't seem to hurt my legs and I actually stepped back from this painting a good half a dozen times. I will probably have to get something taller to put my palette on though. The snack tray I have it on now is too low.
This was my first time using an Ampersand Gessoboard. I had read about other people using them on various blogs and I really wanted to give them a try. I love the smooth surface. I feel like the brush strokes are really standing out rather than being obscured by the weave of the canvas, though that could be the produce of my using really cheap canvas boards. The smooth surface does have its drawbacks. I am one of those painters who will brush over an area again and again. I know you're not supposed to because you'll end up removing paint. This surface is not forgiving of that. It is extremely easy to remove paint from the surface with too much brushwork especially if you are stingy with paint. Both of those are things I need to work on and since this surface doesn't give me a way around it, I think I'll continue to use them.

Mug Series

As usual I was unable to sleep last night. I'm positive that my schedule has become "delayed" as the moronic sleep specialists like to call it. Before Chris left on his little trip, I was well on my way to fixing it. I was falling asleep at an hour that was decent (for me anyway) and waking up pretty much at the same time every day and it went on like this for about two weeks. Even though I was getting a good 6 hours of sleep a night, it was sleep at a time when my body didn't want it. So I'd roll myself out of bed at 8 or 9. Every muscle in my back tense and stiff. My legs, arms and shoulders screaming with shooting and stabbing pains. Of course, I'd also feel like I'd gotten absolutely no sleep at all. My forehead usually was pounding and I was totally nauseated. I'd drag myself around for most of the day feeling like I had some horrible combination of the flu and food poisoning. If I'd been able to keep it up for a month, it would have started to get better. But then my husband went on one of his helicopter hobby trips. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have cared. But I knew that him leaving would send me into an emotional tail spin. Not to mention the fact that I can barely dress myself let alone do any sort of household chore. I knew it would be a complete and utter disaster and it was. I was appalled that he'd leave me alone in my state for so long. I can manage two days or while he's at work... but 5? I thought he was acting selfish and inconsiderate and let him know it. My only consolation is that his little 5 day excursion was about as horrible as mine. He decided to drive and was stuck in the car for 13 hours with people he wasn't exactly thrilled about. Plus weather problems at the event itself. I tried to be sympathetic when he got back but he could tell I was faking it.

So anyway, around 5:30 in the morning I gave up on attempting to sleep. I wandered into my little make-shift studio, laid out my paints and started this painting. I have a bunch of mugs and I may do a whole series of them.

PRO
1) I feel I really got the reflections made by the fabric well.
2) The negative space the handle is forming is actually damned near perfect to the model.
3) I managed to place the mug correctly on the canvas. It's exactly where I wanted it.

CON
1) I wish I could have captured the fabric the mug was sitting on better. It's a beautiful quarter yard from my quilting collection. I deliberately simplified it down to a simple stripe because I really wanted the reflection practice.
2) Despite a few measurements, the actual mug is shorter and wider than this mug. Even though I measured the mug's width and height, I still wasn't able to capture the squat look of the original mug.
3) Also the actual mug is white and you'd think this was painted from more of a cream colored subject.
4) The mug's still has some minor drawing issues. The mug itself is not symmetrical which is making it appear taller on the right than the left. The correct left edge is not matching up with the incorrect right edge. The rim is also not symmetrical.

LESSON
Buy better god damned paint. When I made my charge back into oil painting, I did what many beginners do. I cheaped out. I bought student grade paints and brushes and I've been regretting that decision ever since. Cheap brushes are generally the first thing to break down so those have long since been placed. The paint tubes last longer though. I have slowly been replacing them with higher quality paints but some of those tubes are lasting way longer than I thought they would. As usual I need to step backwards more often. I probably really need to start standing up when I paint.

I laid out the painting flat to dry and set up what I'm going to be diving into tomorrow if I'm able to. I really need to organize my studio area. Right now it's serving a dual purpose as cat corral and art studio. My oldest cat, Hannah, had something of a breakdown last year around Thanksgiving and we have kept her separated from the other cats ever since. She is terrified of all the other cats in the house (to the point of spontaneous urination and defecation at the sight of them) and doesn't want to emerge from that room. Behavior therapy and finally medication have not helped her so in her little room she stays. It is getting rather cluttered with items that really should be in other parts of the house.

On to still life

I want to try to set up a nice little single item still life. I had set up a wine bottle. I like to take the labels off so I have naked glass but this bottle's label was quite stubborn. When I took it out of the dishwasher, the label was ripped in a few spots. It looked so good I left it like that. I had set that one up first but then I decided I wanted something smaller and easier. I went with a white mug my Mom got me from starbucks while she was in Las Vegas. i toned the canvases for it tonight. Well they're not canvases they're canvas panels I got on sale at Michaels. I tried to improve the painting surface with some gesso. Actually I may break into one of those gessoboards now that I'm thinking of it. Maybe one of my cool mugs. There was a mug challenge on DPW (Daily paintworks).

That's my plan for tomorrow. PAINT! I'm sick of working on these long term paintings. I really want to try to just crank one out. It must be doable. I see all these other people do it.

Of course I'm up at this ungodly hour because I can't sleep. Which is why I toned the canvases tonight since I wasn't doing anything else but reading some teen novel series. Yes, I'm 33 and I occasionally read YA fiction. My friend MaryBeth introduced me to the whole Percy Jackson series. Oddly enough it's not the storylines or the great quests or adventures that I'm loving. It's how the greek gods have evolved to fit the times. Hermes carries around an electronic signature pad when he delivers packages. He has a cell phone. Apollo pulls the sun across the sky in a bright red Maserati. Ares rides a harley. And you'll find Hephaestus tinkering under the hood of a car in a mechanic's jumpsuit with his name embroidered on it. They have Hephaestus TV, all reality shows all the time! See, that's the shit that makes me giggle.

And I need a good giggle. It's been better since Chris has been back. I'm not as anxious about random bumps and noises in the house. Not that I think Chris is a good protector. An excellent provider yes. A protector? Sorry ladies, when you marry a nerd, trust me, you're going to want to be the one holding the bat and checking out the noise in the middle of the night. Oh i have no doubt in a real danger, Chris would have no second thought about putting himself between me and a mugger's gun. He wouldn't do anything so stupid as to try to save the situation and that I love him for. A knight in shining armor can still turn into a dead knight in shining armor.

Forgive any typoes. I don't have my glasses on.

This brain runs on fumes...

While some things may be changing about my illness, somethings remain the same. And it always turns out that sleep deprivation always makes the pain worse. Without a doubt, if I have not slept, I will be in pain during the coming day regardless of anything else. It's the one thing I can absolutely count on. Two sleepless nights in under 7 days. I'd like to say that's a record for me but it isn't. At one point a few years ago I was falling asleep only every other day, but it's certainly my worst sleep stretch in at least two years. I guess I'll try to chalk it up to left over pms and a traveling husband insanity.

But as usual when I see the sun come up, I desperately try not to fall asleep until it goes back down again. When trying to pull an all nighter as an adult, I never intend to fall asleep. It's an accident or a weakening of the will. I rest my head back on the couch and close my eyes for a second or I tell myself I'll just lay down for a few hours and before I know it? 8 or 9 hours have gone by. So today has been a steady stream of working through my pain and exhaustion, while doing my best to keep my eyes wide open and not accidentally fall asleep.

Paint. The first order of business. I was supposed to go to art class this morning but an all nighter means absolutely NO driving. I've fallen asleep at the wheel before. There's usually no warning and it's so lightning fast you never notice. One second your car is in the left lane. The next? It's on the grassy shoulder and to your own utter horror you have no memory of the time in between. And it can happen even on that 5 minute trip around the corner. I think that any driver who even risks it is absolutely friggin' completely insane.

So I started filling in cherries this morning at around 10AM. I am waiting for them to dry so I can fill in the stems. I don't know quite what I want to do about stems yet. I suppose I'll also have to adjust some of the shadows to match the stems however I decide to draw them in. It's going to be an artistic license thing because I don't like the way the stems appear on the actual still life. I'm only working from a poor picture now.

I really do love the way it's turning out. There's just something about the composition I cannot wrap my brain around. Maybe it's how one sided it is. Like the pitcher and the cherries are just off on one side and then there's this big chunk of empty blue cloth on the left side. It might just be my eye that's drawn to it. I find that when you become more familiar with a painting, you only see the flaws that are glaring to you and not to anyone else. Maybe I should turn the thing upside down or on its side or something. I don't know really how to become "unfamiliar" with it. And I don't know how to figure out exactly what it is that's bothering me. Last class, I may bring it back to the teacher to figure out what it is. I appreciate her encouragement. But I really hope she can tell me what it is that may be off.

Feeling so much better today

Since my husband has been away at his radio controlled helicopter adventure, I have been feeling pretty miserable. Don't get me wrong, I miss him but I'm not really feeling all that lonely. I've mostly been feeling vulnerable and filled to the brim with anxiety. It's relaxed a little now and my spirits have raised. For a few days there, I was feeling really miserable and depressed. The insomnia is still bad as ever. After not sleeping all Thursday night, I finally did fall asleep at around 3AM last night. But I'm still awake now but it's not causing me any worries. I may only try to catch a catnap for this unit of sleep.

I think that what has raised my spirits the most has been the relative pain-free existence I've had for the past 24 hours. I'm still quite weak and have very little stamina but I think that this coming week I may try to build back into my normal household routine. I tried it this past week with poor results.

I fiddled with the cherry and pitcher still life painting a little more. I didn't feel the need to take or post a picture since all I did was futz with the left edge of that pitcher. It looks way better now but the change is so subtle I doubt it would show up on a picture. Unfortunately, that edge is STILL bothering me. I found it very useful to turn the painting on its side. A good lesson was learned there. Just because it's going to be viewed right side up doesn't mean you have to paint it that way. I found it much easier to see the flaws in the two edges once I turned it on its side with the offending edge on the bottom. I'm now starting to think that a small waver in the right edge is actually what may be causing me to feel the left edge is so wrong. I'm going to correct that tomorrow.

I am also planning on diving into the cherries tomorrow. I'm trying to figure out exactly how I want to do the cherries. I think there's going to be a lot of creative license here where it comes to color and I think it could make or break the composition which I already think is a little flawed. I pondered moving the cherries around and changing them by printing out the cherries and just tacking them up onto the painting and I can't seem to find a composition I'm happy with. I think I should have placed the whole composition more to the left of the canvas. That way I could have used the cherries as a way to lead the eye into the bowl and pitcher. I suppose I could paint over the whole damned thing and start again but I think I need to just let it go and keep it as a reminder to plan better in the future.

I was thinking of fiddling with the portrait painting as well but I think I want to keep the pressure of having the painting done only in class. It's good to have a time limit. I really want to set up a nice simple still life at home but I don't really have any idea how to properly control the lighting. I'll ask my teacher next class if she can give me any suggestions about that.

More minor fiddling

I did some more minor fiddling with the cherry cup and the table shadows. The painting and re-painting sections is really starting to get under my skin. I am continually fudging the rim of the cup without success. I have been unable to replicate the tapered and rounded edge to my satisfaction. The inside of the cup is also proving difficult. I completely painted over the tops of the cherries. Actually, the entire cup is wrong. The oval shape is far more wide and doesn't come up as high on the pitcher. I don't want to leave it but the pitcher right now is beautifully rendered to me. I don't want to have to repaint any of it. I plan on working the cherries more thoroughly once the inside of the cup and the rim dry. The cup isn't my focus, the pitcher and the cherries themselves are so I think I may just let the cup's flaws go. This paint is not going to be one I'll be able to keep around the house, I may give it to my parents. It will continue to bother me if I keep it around.

I did some more work on my "Manhattan Henge" painting. The photograph I am working from appears to have been taken on whatever street it is that the Chrysler building is on and that famous building is in the picture. I'm debating whether to include it or to not bother trying to make that particular building distinguishable or not. I'm leaning towards not trying to replicate the building and instead creating a non-descript building with a spire on top. I like shapes on the right side. I don't want both sides to be just typical square buildings and I have that on the left side. There are some beautiful light sections, almost like highlights, of the canvas underneath. In retrospect I wish I had thought ahead more and used that somehow.

Color and mixing exercises

Making the grids for these little charts was an exercise in patience. It seems that the 1/4" width of the tape and the minimum 1" width of the square didn't exactly make for even divisibility into the 9"x12" canvas board I used. And I'm a real stickler for that sort of neurosis. I made it work eventually. It took me near all day to get it to work. I was really happy and eager to get to painting and I really tried not to rush it. I knew if I messed it up and it looked uneven it would really bother me.

I tried to organize it as light to dark as I could make out. The naples yellow was the hardest of all the colors since it starts out so light to begin with. In the picture it actually is hard to make out the change at all. The book said 5 values. At my class, the teacher had us do small examples with three. I found the 3 value one to be fairly easy and got the hang of it quickly in class. This 5 value one was quite a different story. Even though it seems logical that the 3rd value should appear halfway between and the 2nd and 4th values should appear halfway between those, respectively, it's a lot harder in practice. While I think the entire 10 values would probably be excessive, I actually think it would be way easier to judge out the small gradations and make than even. If you roll a ball down a steep hill, you know it will get to the bottom and touch the spot where the hill meets the ground. If you bounce the ball, it's harder to get the ball to land on that spot.

I really wish there was some way to figure whether or not this actually correct. Some of the values feel like value 4 is the mid point and that the rest of the values are just gradations down between the actual 50% and between, almost like value 4 and the other values seem too light. Like there's a huge dump between the straight from the tube and value 4 and the rest of the grades are fine. Yet when I attempt to correct them, they seem far too dark. Even adjusting one or two seems to throw the whole thing off and make it seem even more wrong.

Sometimes it's really so hard to see the cause of an error because all you know is that something is wrong and you can't figure out why. And sometimes you don't really know if there is an error. Something may feel off and it may just be my own lack in my abilities that's telling me something is wrong when really there is nothing wrong. Also having the other colors next to them was difficult to make the judgement and I probably should have covered them up as I did each column.

Daily painting

Recently I decided to make a foray back into oil painting. I remember as a teenager it brought me great joy (actually the parental praise brought me the most joy out of it). And if I can drop the modesty for a few minutes, I seemed to be fairly good at it without being taught. It made me feel good to know that I may have some sort of inner kind of talent for something and since my hopes and dreams of veterinary school have disintegrated I really wanted to reclaim something. Plus unlike many of my other hobbies (quilting, knitting and spinning), painting is the most stationary in terms of body movement and the easiest on whatever the hell this illness is that I seem to have now.

So I do what I usually do whenever I pick up something new or restart something. I dived in head first, pedal to the floor. I did a lot of web searches. I read a lot of artist blogs and webpages. Daily Paintworks being one of my absolute favorites for inspiration. The variety of styles is truly incredible. I could spend hours clicking around. Plus the weekly challenges are really something I would love to start doing.

But if there is one thing that reading all these blogs and websites has gotten through to me is that in order to paint better, you have to paint. So, beginning now (and oddly enough with the start of a month) I will make an effort to paint every single solitary day. Whether it's working on a larger painting or just a small little "study" or "sketch" like painting. I will post pictures along with self critique involving what I do and do not like about the painting along with what I feel I learned. And, most importantly, I will list at least 3 positive aspects of the painting and no more than 5 negatives.

August 1, 2011

PRO
1) I love the stem. It actually seems "attached" to the pear.
2) There's a good range of values in the pear. The darks seem dark enough to me and the lights are light enough.
3) I didn't overpaint the pear. I left a nice "painterly" quality to it instead of trying to make it look like a photograph.
4) The lighting is done well. There's good direction to it.

CON
1) The background color is far too bold. I fell in love with the color of the fabric that I think I'm letting it overpower the pear itself.
2) I placed the pear far too high. I loved the shadow it was casting so much it's almost the focus of the painting. If I actually wanted to frame this it would really not work. As it is I want to slice off a good inch from the left side and bottom.

LESSON
I learned a great deal about bristle pressure in this painting. A lot of the time I found myself actually removing paint from the pear because I was pressing too hard. I'm learning to not choke up so much on brush and instead hold the brush more towards the back. I also found that in the beginning when I'm just fleshing out shapes and values that I need to use far far far less paint to do it. I need to start making a pledge to myself to also stop painting after I sign the damned thing. I put my initials on the bottom corner and then I started futzing with the background and the little speckles. I'm also still working on the signature. I know that seems like a silly thing to want to work on but I really want to find something I like. I want it to always be the same thing... the same color... the same style. Right now I'm really liking the simplicity of the initials and the straight from the tube red.