It’s been a while since my last post. With holiday travel, cooking and cards, there just wasn’t time to paint. Now I’m back and determined to finish this painting so I can start on something new!

At this point, I am adding finishing touches all over the painting, so I need a little bit of each color.

Over break I got a big piece of glass to work on. The large work area is a real joy, especially at this stage in the painting where I need to hop from place to place, using miniscule amounts of all of the colors.

I think the reflections in the wine glasses turned out pretty well. I will probably knock the specular highlights down to a light gray and do a bit more work to adjust the shape of the base of the glass on the right.

Here’s the painting at the end of the evening. I’m not happy with the reflections on the carafe, so I will probably rework it tomorrow. Note that the lower left half of the painting below the diagonal seems wet, while the upper right half is dry. Before I applied any paint, I “oiled out” the areas where I planned to work by applying a thin coat of medium, in this case Neo Megilp. Oiling out gives a uniform working surface and assists in blending.

With Thanksgiving tryptophan coursing through my veins, I headed into the studio for few more hours of painting. Here’s how it looked when I started:

First order of business was to paint the front edge of the table. Then I reworked the red cloth:

By the end of the weekend I managed to add shading and highlights to the pear:

The evening I worked on the table top and the shadows. Here’s how the painting looked when I started:

Here it is at the end of the evening:

Specific changes:

• Darkened back left of tabletop to help emphasize the pool of light in the front.
• Darkened back right corner of tabletop.
• Softened rear table edge center and right.
• Moved the shadows of the wine glasses to be consistent with a single light source.
• Adjusted the shapes of the wine glass shadows.
• Painted decanter shadow.
• Extended shadows from tabletop onto red cloth.
• Adjusted bowl shadow.
• Painted over some sanding marks.

This evening I reworked the background (again). Pictures below show before and after.

This time I used bigger brushes to get a smoother gradient and I played around with putting more color into the background. The new background has neutral grays along with slightly violet and slightly green grays. I am hoping these will work well with the red in the cloth and the color of the wine.

Began repainting the background today. Was able to cover most of the sanding marks. Still need smooth out the gradient a bit more.

One of the many hazards of still life painting is spoiled, rotting subject matter. I started my “Wine and Apples” still life exactly two months ago. About two weeks after setting up the tableau, the fruit flies arrived. After three weeks, even the fruit flies were dead. Today I thought it might be a good idea to clean and replenish the wine glasses. Imagine my surprise when I found this gooey red wine reduction in the glass. I could probably mix it with some linseed oil and use it for painting.

A very dry red.

It’s always darkest before the dawn. At today’s group crit, Gary pronounced my “Apples and Wine” painting all-but-done, needing only some detail work. He predicted that I would be finished by Thanksgiving.

After class I took a sanding block to the canvas to remove some of the more offensive, ham-handed strokes. It now looks like I took a huge step backwards, but the sanding was a necessary step in creating a finished piece that I will be proud of. With the bad strokes out of the way I am now free rework the background, tabletop, and cloth, before heading into the home stretch.

The painting, after sanding.

I wrote a note to myself with the list of remaining work items. I am expecting that I will now work through this list, crossing things off one by one while refraining from adding new items. The end really is in sight and I am already planning for my next painting.

My to-do list.

Today I finished adjusting the ellipses so that the painting has a consistent eye level. I think the shapes are good enough to proceed, but it is amazing how many things I can find to fix. It seems the longer you look at a painting, the more problems you find. Not really sure how you know when you are done.

This painting still has a way to go. First, I want to sand off some ugly brush strokes in the background and on the cloth. Once I’ve done this, I plan to repaint the gradients in the background and on the table top to be more dramatic. On the table, especially, I want to emphasize the pool of light on the left, while adjusting the shadows to be consistent with a single light source. Once I’ve done that, I will finish up the folds and shadows on the cloth and paint the narrow line of shadow under the left side of the cloth. Then I’ll do the reflections on the bowl, finish the fruit, and finally add specular highlights.

The end is in sight, but I still probably have a couple of weeks to go.

Beginning to move to a lower eye level. Construction lines are drawn in vine charcoal.

Adjusting the ellipse at the surface of the wine.

At this point, all of the shapes look pretty good. I’ve lowered the eye level for the decanter and adjusted the wine glasses.