Red reflection in the teapot

This week, I concentrated on the teapot, trying to model the shadows while also building up the shadows of the cloth alongside. The teapot is still too "blue", so I've been repainting it with some yellow ochre mixed into the white in the lightest areas, and raw umber in the shadow areas. That's a work in progress -- I haven't done anything yet around the spout, which is still too grey. I'll be adding some green to that side.

The red reflection on the right side does complicate things. It reaches up into the half-tones of the shadows in the teapot more than I appreciated before. On my first go, the underlying red shone through beautifully over a layer of grey that I had added. But now the grey has dried too opaque, and so I need to go back over it with a glaze of cadmium red again. This coming week, I'll be building up the shadows of the cloth and redrawing the contour of the pot on the right side. The shadow will be built up with pure Alizorin Crimson. Juan also suggested blending some Alizorin Crimson and Cadmium Red to create some of the frayed ends of the cloth, particularly in the spot where the cloth rolls.

Strange beginning

My still life has had a strange beginning, it seems to me. But I've been following the correct approach. The current phase goes by three names used interchangeably.

• Dead Colour: the paint you first apply gets soaked up by the "ground" of the panel or canvas, leaving it looking rather dull. Yup.
• Local Colour: the goal is to paint the true colour of the objects. That is, the colour you'd see if there were no lights and shadows and reflections changing the colour of the object. It's almost impossible to get this right so they just tell us to put down whatever you can,
• First Inlay: Add a thin layer the consistency of house paint, and then let it dry. It's tempting to want to fix the colour at your first go while it's still fresh, but then you make the mistake of doubling the layer of paint.  

I'm nearly done this stage, with just a bit more work to do on the tea pot (which I'll explain below).

The red cloth is what gives this phase its strangeness for me. Wherever it sits, whether in light or in shadow, it has to be given a strong underpainting of its local colour, almost pure Cadmium Red. The reason is, I'm told, I'll never have another chance to give it its true "redness"-- it's all shadows of Alizorin Crimson and tints of Tintanium White after this. The red cloth is also reflected along the side and bottom of the teapot, and so it too gets a treatment of Cadmium Red too, although I haven't done a good job yet of blending it with the teapot's local colour.
At this moment then, I have a large red blob on the panel, much larger than the equivalent red that will be seen in the finished painting. I can still see the boundaries of my drawing for shadows and the edge of the pot, so that hasn't been lost.

The white teapot also needs more work because it isn't really a white. I did a quick lay in with variants of grey, but it's obviously too cool a grey. It should have been mixed with raw umber as well for the shadow areas (especially bottom) and a dash of yellow ochre for the centre. Next time.  

One other note I forgot to document. When I first started, I wanted to go from the centre out, light to dark. This was wrong. The dark values are needed first around the teapot to know how light it really is. And so the background top, sides, and bottom were completed first.