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.
This week’s word is “Bundle”. Manet’s painting, “A Bunch of Asparagus”, immediately came to mind so I headed to my local produce department for some baby asparagus. To reinforce the theme of “bundle”, I included a second bundle, this one consisting of eleven new yellow pencils. I chose the pencils because they were roughly the same size and shape as the asparagus but lent a complementary color. My hope was that viewers would see the juxtaposition of the pencils and asparagus and immediately see that the commonality was the bundling.
Bundle of pencils with a bundle of asparagus.
I couldn’t resist a little art history joke. The picture below is an homage to Manet’s “L’asperge”. Here’s the story as told by the Musée d’Orsay:
Manet sold Charles Ephrussi “A Bunch of Asparagus” for eight hundred francs. But Ephrussi sent him a thousand francs, and Manet, who was a master of elegance and wit, painted this asparagus and sent it to him with a note saying: “There was one missing from your bunch”.
At today’s crit, I hung a few bundle ideas on the easel, returned to my seat, waited a moment, then said, “there’s one missing from the bunch” and produced this final image.
An homage to Manet’s “L’asperge”.
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.
This week’s Word-of-the-Week is “Severe”. I considered severe weather, with a falling barometer on a window sill with coast guard weather flags flying in the distance against a blood red sky and I thought about a severe snow storm with snow drifting against the window sill. I also considered a severe cliff face and a severe hair style, but in the end settled on severe looking shards of broken glass that could make severe cuts.
I headed to the grocery store with the idea of a broken bottle base with sharp fingers pointing skyward, like a bombed out cathedral from World War II or the outer shell of the World Trade Center after 9/11. I had a bit of trouble finding glass bottles – nearly everything is plastic now. Thank god for Mexi-Coke.
Here’s one of the images I presented in class.
My original word-of-the-week image for the word, “servere”.
Gary picked up a brush and with a few carefully placed strokes, put my bottle shards into orbit around the Earth with the moon shining above. I really like the idea and am hoping to paint it soon.
Gary’s suggestion – basically the shards of the Coke bottle are floating in orbit above the Earth.
Over time, the shapes in a painting may diverge from those in the original drawing. Sometimes this is intentional, but often times, the proportions and viewpoints just get slightly off and the painting no longer reads correctly. At this point, it helps to reestablish the drawing.
This week, I put the paintbrushes down and picked up a stick of vine charcoal to correct my ellipses and adjust the various objects to be consistent with a single viewpoint. The nice thing about using vine charcoal is that you can easily erase it with a dry bristle brush.
Original view of wine glasses. Center lines are drawn with vine charcoal.
By this point, I’ve lowered the viewpoint and reduced the size of the base of the front glass. I also extended the back glass bit further to the left so that it appears to be the same size as the front glass.
My attempt at rendering the scallops along the rim of the bowl doesn’t read correctly. The bowl looks like it is pinched and lopsided. Also, the reflections and shadows don’t really convey roundness.
Here I’ve raised the front rim of the bowl and really worked to correct all of the ellipses. Once I was satisfied with the overall shape, I rendered the bowl, as if it were flat-shaded. Now when I go back and add in the reflections, they will be subordinate to the shading and this should help to preserve the roundness of the bowl.
The glasses and the bowl work well together, but I still need to lower the viewpoint for the wine in the decanter.
I made a lot of progress this evening, painting glass and brass.
The brass bowl was actually pretty easy to paint. First I used some Permanent Alizarin to clarify clarify the shape of the bowl on the left side. Then I mixed up a greenish hue, consisting of Cadmium Yellow Light and French Ultramarine Blue, desaturated with a bit of Burnt Sienna. I painted the bowl from dark to light, and then went back with a brush loaded with a mix of Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Red to color the reflections of the cloth and desaturate the green.
For the bottom of the decanter, I mixed up a fairly bright greenish white, using a mixture of Yellow Ochre and French Ultramarine Blue. I painted the glass at the bottom with the darkest mixture and then streaked in lighter values, in some cases, applying white straight out of the tube. I also used a thin, transparent green to desaturate the purple representing the top surface of the wine.
I used the same technique for the bases of the wine glasses. At this point I still need to adjust the roundness and then paint the glass at the top.
This is the painting at the end of the evening. Not bad for a few hours of painting. Now I can go over the entire painting, adjusting shapes, values and colors, while making decisions about hard and soft edges.
Here’s my punch list for the painting:
I just returned from a trip abroad, so this is my first post in a couple of weeks. Gary is at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, so Jim Phalen is our guest instructor for the week. Jim is a master of paint surface techniques and very knowledgeable about art theory and history. The photos below show my progress for the week.
In my first session back, I worked on the reds, painting the apples and the cloth.
I took Jim Phalen’s advice and extended the Burnt Sienna underpainting across the white tabletop. Then I notched out part of the cloth on the right side in the back to make the composition more interesting.
Painted the pear and the tip of its stem.
Painted the tabletop, the inside of the decanter, and the cork.
Darkened the front edge of the table.
