Still Life: Eggplant and Potatoes

During my still life session last night, I decided that Eggplants would be a pretty interesting composition to try. The beauty of working on an eggplant is that it is difficult to get the texture right. The eggplant is a fairly reflective surface that contains color of the objects around it.

Overall, I'm fairly happy about how this turned out. The foreground eggplant worked out beautifully. The background eggplant has the top reflective plane to be too prominent. When working on the eggplants, I realized the absolutely most important part is to get the drawing done correctly. This was the problem that I had with my previous still life: Pears and Apples. Without a solid drawing underneath, it is extremely difficult to get the rounded look.

The potatoes were another interesting component of this painting. In reality, I placed blobs of yellow, white and yellow ochre/burnt umber to simulate the potato. Up close, it looks like a hodgepodge of paint. When you step about 5 feet away, it looks like potatoes. Karen Winslow, my mentor, helped with the initial portion of the potatoes because I forgot the basic rule: Where is the light?

I have to remember that next time. Overall, this turned out to be a good study and a decent painting.