Lines: Oil: Everyday Object

This project, man. We were supposed to choose a bunch of everyday objects and paint them with oils. Again, I wasn't super enthused with my idea, and I didn't dive into it with elbow grease and all that. I didn't feel that soul-rending passion that I enjoy from the beginning of a project. But, I did it. I'm not finished, I'm going to go back and touch some things up and add some shadows and also some copper design or whatever behind so that it will match the mermaid. I have a plan.
I really hate presenting my painting to the classroom? Because everyone else has these masterful works, and then there's me, and it's amateur hour. Get ready to suffer, Emma! I touched my oils when they were wet because I was painting on the floor between the dining room and the front hall. And because I'm impatient and always have paint all over my hands. So I have to go over and do that. Also, I was painting with minimal light so the colors look all wrong and just--ugh. I dislike it very much.
I mean, I like the basis of the painting. I think I have a solid foundation, and was even able to pull some of that off. I really like Charley, the skull. Mercifin, the dragon, and the mermaid, are a little more abstract, but that's because I didn't have the control I needed to make them more realistic. I didn't like how little I could manipulate the oils. Also, I painted shadows where there shouldn't have been shadows between the books, and it was hard to rectify my mistakes. The whole time I was painting this I felt like I was swimming and just barely keeping my head above water.
I should have done a grouping of objects that appealed to me more, or at least something with a set background that I wasn't making up as I went along. Or, not used blue as my shadows. That's something I learned in drawing, but I really dislike it. Like, it's good in theory, but it takes away from the actual blue. And if no other colors are distorted, it makes you question what you're really looking at. But, at the same time, black is such an overpowering color.
Also, I tried to be clever with the color? At the bottom of the painting, Charley is warm browns and yellows, and then we have the The Dream Thieves, which is red, and the table cloth, which is yellow. Moving up we have Blue Lily, Lily Blue which has a green jacket, the mermaid's tale, and then the hypothetical green fixture in the background. At the top I wanted to group Mercifin, The Raven King, and then the rest of the blue background together. Maybe I'll make like the stack of books and table that they're on are right up against the wall and add shadows to the background along with the fixture, to keep it from being so static.
What we can surmise from this project is that I dislike waiting as much as I ever have, and that I am just as bad with color as I am when we started out. I will get around to fixing the painting, but I don't think it will ever be as good as I hoped it would.