Oil Painting Frustrations

I am still enjoying my oil painting classes but I am a bit frustrated with two of my paintings. During the summer I began a beautiful white flower on a rather large canvas. The dark background and dark green leaves went in nicely and, in a few days, I was ready to add in the white flower petals. I painted them and began the shading in one day and it has been about 5-6 weeks since I put that white paint on the canvas. It is still not dry enough to work on the flower petals and center after all that time! I am very frustrated! I also painted a white covered bridge and, of course, it, too, is still not dry enough to put in the details of the bridge and paint a couple of tree branches over the side of the bridge. I am so impatient for both paintings to dry so I can continue working, but I might as well bide my time because they tell me white paint takes A LONG TIME to dry! Phooey!

Meanwhile, today I began another painting that has fog in it. It is an ocean scene with mountains running right down into the water. I put the dark mountains in and a green area of growth at the bottom of the painting. I have not done the sky or the water yet--and guess what? They have a lot of white in them! For the fog I will learn a new technique on this painting--AFTER the white dries! It is called scumbling and I have been reading about the process but cannot yet visualize exactly how it will work. Guess that is why I am taking painting classes!

I finished a sunset painting several weeks ago, but am dissatisfied with the colors in the sunset. The clouds are just too bright and garish for my taste. It grabs my eye when I look at the painting and keeps me from seeing the landscape. Today, in class, we talked about ways to mellow the sunset colors somewhat and I will probably work on that next week while I am waiting for all the whites in my various paintings to dry! I will either put a glaze over the color to mute it somewhat or just redo the sky.

Or maybe now is the time to begin that lovely water lily painting that I have been considering?