Still Life - Step 2

I'm sure an art teacher would tell me to stop writing, start painting. But it is important to me to record my progress (or lack thereof), so you'll have to put up with me!

When you thought I hadn't been doing much, here is Step 2! First coat of colour (there is a name for it, but I've forgotten what it is) done on Sunday. Then I used white paint (which is not the same white as the canvas, but that's ok, as I'm going to be painting the background anyway) to correct mistakes in shapes. I think it's important to get the basic shapes right before I go into the detail. You would have thought that my bottle would be symmetrical, after all that measuring - It was not. I had to shave off about 2 mm on the right-hand side. The toughest bit is to get the "bumps" symmetrical, both on the bottle and the vase. Not quite there yet (and maybe never will be), but what I'm going to focus on for now is the height of the bottleneck. I'll take the opportunity to adjust the green of the bottle. After that I'll do my background, then the highlights and shadows - I haven't decided yet if I'm going to go for a natural or artificial light. I'll take a couple of photographs at the weekend and then I'll decide.

Does the vase look a bit too squat, I wonder? I'll have to remeasure. Though this photograph is taken from a higher point than when I'm sitting at the desk - hard to know when you have a height-adjustable chair.