Still Life: These boots are made for walking

Well, time to get back to posting. With two shows going on lately, I haven't had that much time to get some painting done. When I did get the time, I was not really interested in doing it. But, starting to get my "mojo" back and time to start playing again.

As most people know, every week, I go over to Cambridge, Vermont to study with Karen Winslow. I have been doing this for almost two years. Karen has shown me a lot about mass painting and observation. I don't always listen or remember what I'm taught, but that's about part for me. My memory is not that great.

However, there are times when I actually look like I know what I'm doing. These boots were definitely it. I had massed out the background, foreground and general shape of the boots. Once the basic mass was done, I defined the dark and light areas to create the sides and tops of the boots. Rather than accurately define each portion of the boot, it was enough to just define the general lighting. Some highlights were added for the buckles. Notice that the buck is not a perfectly round circle, but more along the lines of some loosely defined edges.

The hardest part of this painting was getting the foreshortening correct on the left-most boot (the one directly facing the viewer). I spent more time on the drawing of the boot than I did on the entire painting. However, after stepping back a number of times, I finally achieved the look that I was going for.