Figs!

The first panel is the "Black Mission Demo" panel. It shows a progression of the painting from the drawing stage, to the finish. The two figs in the middle are one sitting of painting and the last three figs are completed. The second panel is just a fig mini. I titled it "Black Mission Mini" because I thought it was cute. To me, the point of painting a bunch of figs lined up is to show them as small portraits. When there is nothing else going on in the painting, you have to look at the difference between each of the characters involved. I tried to pick the figs that were the most unique in some way from each other. There are several different types of fig. These are Brown Turkey Figs and Black Mission Figs. There is nothing in these paintings but figs. I see so many paintings of a bunch of apples or pears, or figs and each one in the painting is treated the exact same way. I think part of why is that most painters work on the whole painting at once working on all of the dark areas and then all of the middle areas etc.  I painted each fig one at a time and then cleaned my palette, forcing me to see new colors each time and not be tempted to use the same color on all of the figs. The changes are subtle, but if you look closely, you will see many differences in each fig.