Sheet, it's slitting out.

Well, faithful reader.
I am happy to report that things have been going well in research-land. After two days in a row of feeling like a big suck of a failure I have been having a trend of progress. Baby steps, doctor Marvin.
I am also happy to report that I still love Allagash Tripel. It's like drinking a bottle of wine, but with no purple lip syndrome and more motor function. Mmmm.
On trixies new web log (which anyone reading this probably knows about) she has showcased my latest painting creations. I have only taken one art class including highschool. I also feel like spending so much time on math in college and beyond has rendered me at a loss to come up with anything that's not geometric or abstract.
The challenge of picking out the actual visable colors in a depiction instead of making everything uniform perplexes me. How do you start? Do you paint the backgrounds first and the foreground on top?