My latest painting, "Marbles for 11 Points" is an 18" x 24" oil on panel.  This painting took me a very long time to complete. I knew I was taking on a lot of detail in the composition as I made a final decision on the setup....but it was even more time consuming than I had imagined.  As much as I love painting marbles....I gave one very big sigh as I completed my third and final layer fine tuning the highlights and the shadows within the marbles.    I did not log the hours for this painting.....but I spent well over two months working on it.  A true labor of love, but I was ready for it to graduate from the easel!   This painting is another composition that I chose to light from above and just slightly to the left. This allowed the full color of the marbles to be showcased with the shadows created primarily by the inner components of each marble and in some cases the neighboring marbles. I chose the slightly left lighting angle to be able to have the lighting help build the 3 dimensionality of the scrabble letters.  On to the next painting!