Worked some more on the Bennington Peaches. The actual peaches were composted long ago. Fortunately the ceramic plate lasts a lot longer.
Tag Archives: painting
Linemen Working
Here’s my latest painting obsession: linemen working through the night to restore power after a storm. The truck is a 1:34 scale die cast from First Gear. It’s about 7 inches long and the bucket extends about a foot upward. The model sits on a piece of clear acrylic which approximates the reflections on the wet road. Lighting is from two LED headlamps and a small LED button light which sits in the back of the truck. The running lights were added in Photoshop. I’ll probably make a telephone pole out of dowel and balsa and then add some broken tree branches.
Once I get the scene designed and looking good in the camera, the plan is to drag the easel over and paint it from direct observation. Technically speaking it will be a still life, but my intention is to make it look fairly realistic, while dialing up the drama.
October 2, 2015
I finally got a chance to work on the peaches again and it’s about time because they are getting pretty ripe. This time I decided to mix things up and paint the peaches before painting the plate. My previous attempts have been fairly dark with the chiaroscuro dial turned all the way up to eleven. For this painting I’m going for a higher key design with more atmospheric volume and warmth in the shadows. My plan is to paint the plate and the shadows with the same value scheme as can be seen in the under painting.
Mount Shuksan II
Here’s one more painting from Day 2 of the the PAWA Mount Baker Paint Out. We returned to Picture Lake before dawn and set-up in the cold and dark. As the sun rose to the left of Mount Shuksan, we painted the mists rising off the lake. One challenge I had was that my water miscible paints would freeze on the palette as I did my block in. Once the sun rose, the paint thawed out and everything was fine.
Artist Point
At the PAWA Mount Baker Paint Out, Day 1. In the afternoon I headed up to Artist Point. We had tried the location first thing in the morning, but it was completely socked in so we went back down to Picture Lake. By afternoon, the clouds had lifted a bit at Artist Point, but not enough for grand sweeping vistas. Undaunted, I decided to concentrate the fall foliage. It didn’t rain for this painting, but I had to beat a hasty retreat shortly after taking this picture when a hailstorm filled my pochade box with icy pellets!
Mount Shuksan I
At the PAWA Mount Baker Paint Out, Day 1. I painted Mount Shuksan in the rain from Picture Lake. I’m a pretty slow painter and over the summer I had the luxury of spending multiple of sessions on each painting. Different story at Mount Baker. With the fall weather, the light is constantly changing, making it hard to do a longer, multi-session painting. Instead I am learning to work fast. This painting was completed in just two hours.
A reporter for King5’s Evening Magazine stayed overnight with us at the lodge and interviewed a number of us while we were painting.
PAWA Mount Baker Paint Out
I attended the Plein Air Washington Mount Baker Paint Out this weekend. We stayed at the Mountaineers’ Baker Lodge across from Picture Lake and painted two days – one in rain and hail and one in sun. Great company, great food and great painting!
Bennington Peaches IV
I started a new Bennington Peaches painting. The previous iteration still needs another session or two, but it is has some drawing and compositional issues that I felt would be easier to address in a new painting.
The peaches in this painting are fuller and really crowd the plate. The outlines of the peaches and their form shadows are more interesting and more specific. The previous painting started out more like this one, but the peaches shrank and became less specific as I worked on them. I will finish the earlier painting to get some practice painting the peaches and then apply what I learned to this painting.
September 20, 2015
Tonight I painted the plate with its pattern of blue splotches and then added some thin color to the underpainting of the peaches. It always amazes me how different the painting is from its underpainting. In the next session, I will paint the peaches closer to their final form and then finish the tabletop.
The base color for the plate was a neutral mixture of Prussian Blue, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, and Titanium White. The spots used the same colors, but almost no yellow.
For this study, I first painted a neutral plate in shadow and light and then went back and added the blue splotches on top of the wet paint. As I suspected, this approach worked better than starting with a blue plate and painting neutral around the spots.
Bennington Peaches III
My first project with the new still-life stand was another Bennington Peaches study. Zip-ties hold a mirror that gives me a perfect top-down view of the peaches on the blue plate.
Here’s the underpainting on an 8″ x 8″ stretched canvas.
I started by covering the canvas with a random pattern of middle value acrylic colors, including French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna, and Burnt Umber, all lightened with Titanium White. I also painted the sides of the canvas with black acrylic paint.
When this was dry, I started the oil underpainting using water miscable oils. First I established the outlines of the peaches, the plate, and the core and cast shadows using Burnt Sienna. I then painted in the shadows using a combination of Prussian Blue, Terra Verte, and Burnt Sienna. A final step was to lightened the table with a bit of Titanium White.