Still Life: Lemon

For last night's painting class, we worked more on rounded objects. This time, however, we didn't have a time limit. The purpose was to try to remember all of the different methods for creating a rounded object and to study the reflection of other materials on our objects. For this lemon, I had to make sure that I worked on the reflection of the background on the top of the lemon, the table onto the bottom of the lemon and the reflection of the lemon into the cast shadow.

The basic layout of the lemon was pretty quick (about 15 minutes). As I stepped back, I realized that the lemon was pretty flat (I was just defining the light/dark masses), so, it was time to work on the edges.

As before, I remembered the important points for the edges:

1) The darkest part of the shadow is NOT the edge, but just inside of it. The absolute edge of the shadow contains the reflected light and some greyness to turn the edge over.

2) The cast shadow looks flat if you don't add the reflected light of the lemon. This was a problem that I couldn't figure out how to fix, until Karen mentioned this to me.

3) The darkest part of the shadow is where the lemon actually touches the table. However, it can't be too dark or your eyes would immediately move to that line.

4) Use various greys to turn the edges over to get a rounded feel.

After paying attention to these points, the lemon had a more rounded look.

Still Life: Flowers on Purple Table

Last night, I was able to finish my painting of the flowers in the white vase (started at last week's class with Karen Winslow). I'm extremely happy about the way that it turned out. I like the shapes of the flowers and the leaves. The colors are nice and vibrant and the composition seems to work well.

It was interesting that I thought that the painting looked good at my last session. However, when I went to work on it some more, I noticed that the table cloth was a lot darker than I had initially assumed. Also, there was a bit more dark reds in the table. The shadows in the leaves were also darker. So, I glazed over the areas to enhance the colors and formed the leaves better (adding touches of light and dark values, here and there).

So, this painting turned out well.

Still Life: Flower on Purple Table

Well, now that I'm starting to get more of the feel of how to paint flowers, I decided to tackle them again last night. This was a beautiful arrangement and provided a nice challenge of various greens mixed in with confusing whites.

As usual, after I toned the canvas (also known as pitching), I just laid in the basic color scheme to get the feel of where all of my masses were. After that, I started laying down the actual colors based on the values that I saw.

At one point, I realized that my vase was too grey and that I was working too much on it. The main reason for the error was that I was NOT laying down the values for ALL of the objects before doing the detail. Once I stepped back, laid down all of the other values (table, leaves, etc) correctly, my grey vase immediately became white.

As you can see, there is still a lot of work to do on it. It's amazing how fast 3 hours goes when doing something small and detailed. But, this time, I was able to take some pictures of it and will use those to finish off the values. The important part is that, since my general values are already done, it's a matter of using the photo to help define where some of the masses are, rather than paint directly from the photo.

Still Life: Flower in Vase

Now that my weekly class (with Karen Winslow) has started up again, time to get rid of some bad habits that I was falling back into.

Last night's session was awesome. It's good to get back to painting with friends again. So, last night, I decided to try my hand again at painting flowers. Lately, I've been falling back into my old habits of not observing the light/shadow area, working too much detail into one section before going onto the next, not controlling my edges. Last night, I tried to make sure that I paid particular attention to those bad habits.

This flower painting came out well. Not near complete, but not bad. I love how the vase came out. I was able to successfully lay out the basic drawing using the back of my brush handle on a toned canvas. When I laid down the masses of colors for the flowers, it worked out well. I started working more on the flowers, until Karen reminded me that I had to mass out the vase first. That way I can establish my overall value patterns and see how each object relates to another.

Next time, I'll remember to bring my camera with me. This would have been a fun painting to finish, but the flowers will be drooping by the time that I get back to them. Next time, I'll just take some pictures so that I can finish up the painting later.

Good night of painting.

Still Life: Doll

Tonight's still life is one of my wife's dolls. This is a decorative doll that sits idly on our TV (due to the fact that the dogs like to grab it and think that it's a chew toy).

Felt like doing something more realistic and complex tonight, rather than the standard coffee mug. The interesting part of working on this is the creation of the three-dimensional form. The lighting was not strong, so, to my eyes, many parts of the doll was flat. So, the problem becomes to figure out how to create the subtle shadow forms to create a three-dimensional object.

Overall, I like the drawing. It definitely looks like a doll sitting on a box. The shadow under the doll helps place it in the correct plane and the rounded shadows on the edge of the arms help define the form of the arms.

Still Life: Protector

Finished a fun still life. This toy dragon is one of my nephew's toys and I just liked the look of him.

When first doing this painting, I realized that I painted it too light. During the daytime, the colors were too flat. Instead, I used that light massings as the base color and added dark shadows using a mix of Sepia and ultramarine deep.

I'm pretty happy with the way that this painting shaped out. I like the strong contrasted colors. I also like the composition. It lets the viewer wonder what is the dragon so angry about. Using the laying down obelisk also helps the viewer focus towards the edge of the canvas.

Still Life: Coffee Cup and Saucer

Well, finally got some time (and interest) in finishing the coffee cup still life that I was working on. I really like this painting. It came out pretty well. I like the color composition and the cup looks like a cup.

The only part of it that bother's me is that the saucer looks a little flatter than I would have liked. I believe that it has to do with the shadows in front of the cup. They're a little flat. I'll have to go back and produce a little more of an edge to it.

When working on this cup, I tried to pay attention to two of my major failings: 1) Don't overblend over areas that I've already placed paint on. Place down the paint at the right value and then leave it alone. Only blend where the paint shifts values. 2) Separate the object into light areas and dark areas first. Once that is done, you can start defining the areas and put in details.

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.

Still Life: Orange

Tonight's still life is another fruit: an orange. Okay, this was really really tough. At first, I thought that this would be pretty easy due to the fact that it's almost one single color with a dark/light area and that the object was spheroid.

Ha! Not so easy. The hardest part for me was to create the actual orange color. The typical orange that you get from the tube is too bright and strong. Therefore, you need to tone it down some with some greys. However, after studying the orange for a while, I realized that there's a hint of yellow (due to the lights in the living room), white (due to the bright spot light that I have on the still life) and, naturally wall/table colors.

The other tough part was that, when you look at an orange up close, there's a lot of ridges, dips and speckles. If you try to do each one, as you step back, you lose the roundness of the orange. If you don't do any sort of texture, then the orange is smooth... too much like a ball.

I don't know if I was successful in making it look like an orange, but it was a lot of fun trying to solve those problems.

Still Life: Banana

Tonight, decided to try something a little simpler than the flower... a banana. I'm extremely happy about the way that this turned out. Took about 2 hours, but, I achieved the results that I wanted.

First of all, I like the new table top that I created. Using the interchangeable table tops will definitely make my still life's more interesting. So, I took one of my yellowing bananas and just wanted to work on shape, plane shadow and reflection.

The first thing that I did was lay down the table colors as close as I could. I also drew the basic shape of the banana and laid down the three visible planes: top, side and bottom edge. Remembering two very important rules that Karen Winslow taught me: 1) Don't use greys to darken yellows... they only make them green. Instead, for bright yellow, use Cadmium yellow, for mid-tone yellow, use Yellow Ochre and for dark yellow, use Burnt Umber. So, I applied various layers of grey to those colors and was able to create the nice "old" banana feel.

So, after defining the basic layers (top, side, and bottom) of the banana, it was time to begin adding various levels of tones (by using different amounts of greys to my base color) and modeling the banana. I use a mixture of the table color with the darker banana base colors to create the reflections.

The second thing that I remembered was that everything reflects into others. So, for the base of the banana, I added a bit of the table color to show that the table reflected up into it. For the top of the banana, I added a hint of the wall color.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this painting. Now, onto another still life. It's all about practice.

Still Life: Flower in Vase

Finished my first still life in my home studio. Overall, I like it. The rose looks like a flower, the leaves look like leaves, the vase looks like a vase, etc.

The only part that I'm not happy about is that the edges aren't that well done. I think that the background is a little distracting. However, edge work is definitely one of the marks that indicates a professional painter versus one learning. This is an area that I have to study more.

Overall, I think that it came out okay.

Portable TableTops

As I'm working on my still life setup, I realize that I really want some nice reflective table tops, rather than just fabric. However, I don't have any tables of the height that I needed.

So, decided to make my own "table-tops". My stand where I set up my still life is a 16" x 22" base that is approximately 4 feet high. I cut various pieces of old wood that I had into the base size. Now that the tops are covered, I can get small cans of various varnishes to cover each side of the boards.

Voila! I have multiple setups/reflections for my still lifes setups. If I'm in the mood for a darker top or different type, I just paint the other side of the table top. This is a cheap and easy way to get a different look for each painting.

Now onto painting!

Still Life: Flower - Basic Layout

Now that I have an area for doing still life's, time for more practice. Last night, I began another attempt at a still life. Still lots of work to do.

After my last aborted attempt, I realized that I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. The drawing was wrong, the lighting was wrong, the colors were wrong. Overall, an extremely miserable attempt due to the fact that I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. This time, I decided to slow down and do the painting.... don't worry about what it will look like in the end. The end will take care of itself.

So, Melissa (my wife) had received a flower from the restaurant where we went for our Valentine's dinner. She suggested that that would be a good painting to do. Since I am awful about painting flowers, I decided... "Yeah! The only way that you get better at something is to practice it." So, I decided... time to paint a flower in a vase.

The first thing that I did was to tone the background with a warm burnt sienna/burnt umber mix. Then I just laid out the basic shapes. The nice challenge to this is the clear glass vase. Since I've just started the basic layout, I only concerned myself with the general shape.

So far, I've worked about 1-1/2 hours on it. Today, I should be able to continue work on it and finish it up.

Still Life: Caving Helmet

For last night's still life, I decided to work on painting my caving helmet and carabiners. The reason is due to the fact that the simplicity of the helmet is offset by the difficulty of the mass of carabiners. In addition, I like the concept of painting a not-so-clean object and seeing if I could get the textures correct.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my effort. As usual, I toned the background and then drew the general shapes using Terra Rosa. From there, I massed in the basic colors for the objects/table based on where my light was coming from.

For instance, after defining the grey/black and white areas of the helmet, I knew that the light was coming from over my left shoulder. So, looking at the helmet, this told me that the brightest part will be above the left light and then gets darker as the helmet moves away from me. So, the brightest area had more pure titanium white and I added more shadow colors/wall colors as the helmet receded.

In addition, I knew that the yellow of the lamp on the left, being in the front, towards the light was brighter than the lamp portion in the back. Therefore, the front lamp contains more purer colors and the back one contains some color of the background in it.

The hardest part of this painting was the carabiner. With Karen's help, I was able to see how to do it. The basic technique is still massing. The darker part of the caribiner is darker than the background. By adding the highlights, the grey object now reads as metal.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this painting. I achieved the "dirty" feel of the helmet in 3D space with duct-tape on it.

Still Life: jar and fruit

Well, last night class resumed again and, boy, am I out of practice with doing still life/realistic objects. Although I've been painting regularly, the stuff that I paint is all out of my head.

Last night's still life was to examine reflection in metallic objects. I did not achieve what I was trying.

Things that went well. I think that the massing of the shapes to create the fruit and the jar are good. The jar definitely looks like a realistic object. The table top and background worked out well and accentuate the jar/fruit nicely.

Okay, enough of that. Now, what went wrong. The very first thing that went wrong was the shape of the vase. It's not smooth and circular. Definite drawing problems with it. The handle is good and the opening on the top looks good. The body of the jar definitely does not have the rounded feeling. The base is definitely wrong with the right side being misshapen.

The fruit looked better than I thought. Although the darker fruit does not look like cherries and the strawberries somewhat resemble strawberries, I can do better.

The main issue (and the one that I was working the most with) was that the reflection on the jar does not look metallic. There is no shimmering surface. It looks more like a painted clay jar than a silver one. I'll have to do this again and try to see what I was doing wrong. At this time, I'm not sure. I think that it has to do with the sharpness of the reflective shape and the greytones.

Not bad since I haven't done a still life for a month, but definitely not good. More work to be done. I'll have to get my still life setup done at home so that I can practice some more.

Still Life: Green Apples

Last night's still life was a struggle, but when I was completed, it was worth it. Working on a traditional bowl of fruit (in this case, apples), I started the painting by drawing the general shapes and massing the shadows/highlight areas.

Two of the basic tenets that I remembered from the last time was 1) Stand-up when painting and 2) Define the direction of the light. By standing up while I paint, I'm able to constantly move about 5 feet away from my painting to make sure that my massing of colors/values are correct. When I was sitting down, it was not that easy to do it. After about 3 hours of painting, standing up, my knees hurt, but I think that I could get used to it. The second tenet that I remembered was to define the light source. This allowed me to put the lightest color on the major light source area and the darker color on the areas outside of the light.

One of the things that I needed to work on, though, was to make sure that I linked my shadows across all of the objects. This is still a work in progress. I also had a difficult time getting the shape of the bowl correct. However, by standing several feet away from the painting, it was pretty easy to determine how to fix the painting.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the painting. The bowls and apples definitely have a rounded feel to them. The next area to also improve upon is the mixing of the appropriate colors.

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.

Still Life: Two Pears and an Apple

During last night's oil painting class, I was working on the "dreaded" pears, again. These pears are the bane of my existence, but they are helping me learn about form. Just need to work on it a lot more.

As you can tell, there's still a lot of work to do on it. I mainly worked on the center pear last night, and the next time, I'll extend it to the other pear, and possibly the apple. Although, I will probably work on the center pear again.

The main issue on the center pear is that the surface is too shiny. it looks too plastic. This was due to the overblending of the yellow texture. Although my instructor gave me tips/worked a bit on getting the darker area of the pear just right, I still had some issues. I think that the biggest issue is the drawing/shape of the pear. I think that will definitely have to be reworked.

Lots to do. However, if you don't tackle the problems that you are faced with, you'll never learn.

Still Life: Pears and Vase

Last Thursday, during my still life painting class, I was having a lot of trouble getting the painting working. Overall, it was definitely not one of my better nights.

When working on the painting, the first issue was the general toning of the canvas. Since I had forgotten to bring my liquin, I decided to borrow some linseed oil and mix that with my water-soluble paints. Unfortunately, I used too much linseed oil and the surface was extremely slick.

After toning the board, the next step was to block out the items that I wanted to paint, using Terra Rosa. The drawing, in the beginning was extremely inaccurate. The vase was fine, but the pears were too small and the small yellow apples were too close to the pears.

The next step was to start laying in the base color. In this situation, I did not refer to my still life as much as I should. The most important part, which Karen Winslow, my instructor, mentioned was that I forgot to evaluate where my light was coming from. In this case, it was the left side of the pears. I had the left side way too dark. She took the brush, mixed some more appropriate colors and laid down the basic colors on the left side of the pears. She also pointed out the issues with the leaves and helped me fix them.

Overall, a rough night. However, I learned a lot. Another important thing that I learned was that I need to replace the white board on my paint palette (where my paint sits on) to be a mid-tone grey. This will help me see the relative values of my colors, better.

Reflections

During tonight's still life, I decided that I wanted to add some reflective objects to my paintings. So, to work on that, I set up several materials with different reflection ratings. The setup contains a standard copper bowl, a brushed nickel chain and a shiny pewter pouring pot.

This was extremely hard. After discussing the technique with one of my instructors (Jack Winslow), I realized that the texturing is solely defined by the number of highlights and the sharpness of the shadow/reflections on the objects.

Overall, I'm pretty happy about the painting. The bowl and pot were done passably well, but the chains were giving me some trouble. Jack showed me how to get the basic shape of the chains using three different color values with blues mixed in, but was not able to create them to my satisfaction (the ones in front were done by him).

However, the reason to paint is to keep improving.