The Importance of Highlights

I've just put the finishing touches to a commission. A farmer's daughter commissioned me to paint her boyfriend's pride and joy - his tractor - as a gift for him. This image shows the difference a few highlights can make. I also darkened the shadow below the tractor to ground it a bit more. You could say it's finished in the first image, it is really, but the highlights just bring it to life somehow...a sprinkle of magic!

Sharing this has made me think about how I know how to do these things, but where does the knowledge come from? For several reasons I didn't really learn much in art college, in fact I left college thinking I couldn't be an artist, and I'm now realising that the way I create is actually intuitive.

I definitely feel that creating automatic art helps. It frees me up so that I'm not so scared of just having a go at other things. That 'having a go' does usually work out.

In the past I was so scared of even starting a piece, worried that I couldn't do it or would ruin it or "do it wrong" - so many hangovers from childhood, school, college, societal expectations, etc. I do still get that feeling, but it's by no means anywhere near my creative paralysis of the past and I can get over it, and get on with it, much quicker.

Anyway. Highlights. Important!