Still Life: Climbing Shoe

The latest still life that I've practiced with is one of my old climbing shoe. This took several attempts and several wipings of the gesso board due to the fact that the drawing was incorrect. I also tried a new surface: ultra-smooth gesso board.

In terms of the painting, it's not bad. Laying out general shapes was pretty easy (since it's mainly various levels of grey and yellow). The hardest part was the fact that there were a lot of nuances in the grey to simulate the "buckling" of the shoe material.

The only part of the painting that I didn't care for is the background and table top. For the cloth top, it was really hard to get it so that the shoe isn't floating above the table. The left side (dark side) of the shoe looks fine (with some lost edges into the shadow). The right right still looks like it's floating. Without a reflection onto the surface, I need to study the setup again to see what I'm missing.

The other thing that I really didn't care for was the ultra-smooth gesso board. I found that I ended up pulling a lot of paint as the brush went over sections that were done. I actually had to wait a bit on the grey section (over night) so that the paint became a little tacky so that I could put on the darker greys.

Overall, pleased with the painting. Next up on the list is a lit candle. Interested to study the light effects of the candle flickering.