Another day, another orange. Getting faster.

Stop by Gage Academy for the Artists of the Faigin Atelier Show in the Entry Gallery. Also on display are some magnificent works by students from the Kang-O’Higgins Atelier in the Rosen Gallery. Both shows run through May 4th.

I’m getting better at painting oranges. The first two small ones took four hours, the second two hours, and now the most recent one took only an hour – and it looks better.

I finally got back to painting and this new Mineola went much more quickly than the previous one. I only spent an hour on this one and I’m happier with the rendering of the form. Can’t wait to see how the next couple of pieces turn out.

After a lot of shades of blue, I am now working with orange paint. My string was based on Cadmium Orange, with Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White at the lighter end, and Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber at the dark end. The results are pretty good, but I found the process harder than when I was painting the pears – this session took me almost four hours, and two of the hours were spent readjusting the form and then evening out the gradient.

I think the next one will go smoother if I paint with finer gradient steps and I get the initial placement of the paint more accurate. One thing that slowed me down was that I made the darker regions too wide and this caused me to adjust and readjust the gradient many times over. If I had painted the dark regions in the right place, at the right size, the first time, I would only have had to smooth the gradient once.

The other thing I want to improve is subtlety of the transition between the body of the Mineola and the lump where the stem attaches. In the picture, below, the transitional region is too dark.

Today I painted the shadows and background gradients on the other two Mineola paintings. I’m getting better at the gradients and am finding that it is easier to blend as I go, versus waiting until after I have painted all of the steps.