"Brown Bottle, White Mug," 6x8, oil on canvas board

I'm really enjoying this little brown bottle. It's maybe 5 inches high, and I got it at an antique store. I figure it's an old medicine bottle of some kind. Don't know. But it does interesting things with the image behind it and you have to really pay attention to colors and shapes. You learn that way.

And, of course, the idea is to learn. You probably don't always know what you learn, but if you can figure it out it's not a bad thing. What did I learn here?

• If your canvas leaps off your easel and takes a face plant on the carpet, you're liable to spend some time pulling fuzz off. Tweezers are good. I actually pushed the brush backwards through the fuzz to pick it up, then used the tweezers to pull it off the brush. And FWIW, the carpet is a cheap thing for cushioning my feet, so the paint stains don't matter.
• If you're going to paint something behind something else, and it sticks out on both sides, draw it without the front thing. I got to a late point in this piece and the mug handle kept looking wrong. I finally removed the bottle, triangulated the handle (you know what I mean) then put the bottle back.
• Painting white crockery is still hard (I did a couple of pieces with white crockery earlier this year). But it's fun to blend other colors into it.

I still have energy for the brown bottle and am looking for things it plays well with.