Finishing Touches for Still Life #3

I'm in the final stage of this painting now. The pine cones and basket were completed in April.
For the last couple of sessions, I've been concentrating entirely on the red cloth, trying to recreate the criss-cross pattern in the cloth. At first, I was tempted to recreate all the black lines as they flow into the darkness. And then I realized that the lines become increasingly soft and lighter the farther back they go. Painting them this way has given the cloth a softness that contrasts nicely with the crisp outline of the apple. The attention stays on the apple, where I want it to be.  The real apple (substitute #3) was removed by students in late April when the smell became too much to be. I don't blame them. :)

For the final few sessions, I'm going to continue softening edges where they need to be softened, and also repaint the background one more time.

Pumpkin Amiss: the March 25th update on Still Life #3

The great pumpkin in my still life set up is history. Caput. It began to cave in on itself from the top so it had to go. May it rest in peace, along with Apple substitute #3. Unfortunately, now is not the season of pumpkins so it's been replaced with a brick to keep the basket up right (as you'll see from the second photo below). The interior of the basket no longer reflects the deep orange so when I was painting the interior weaving with a brown/pale yellow mixture, I added some orange as well.

Post-pumpkin, not everything is in the same place as it once was. The pine cones have fallen off the ledge more than once. The basket itself is not on precisely the same angle it was: I now see less on the left side than I used to. I'm also getting confused about the shape at the top of the basket, so I'm planning to correct that tonight by angling it in more sharply as it reaches the top of the panel and make it disappear into the darkness. For the weaving itself, I'm just trying to capture a sense of what it would be if it were my main focus, and then I'll blur the details so they don't take away from the painting's centre.

March 1 update on Still Life #3

Things are beginning to smell and a fine web of mould now coats the pumpkin... so I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep the pumpkin in place. Yet its bright orange is such an influencer on the colour of the objects around it.

I've finished painting the first pine cone, the one sitting in the basket. I'm pleased with the colours I came up with but my drawing was not as good as it should have been. It's sitting a little "pinched" in shape.  Yet, I'm abandoning the accuracy of shapes. The pumpkin itself has shrunk about 10% in the last three months, so it's height/width are no longer serving as good guides for measuring the placement of anything else.

Only the basket has been a constant. I'm now beginning to add more detail in the weaving.

Closeup:

Full view:

Update on the Perishable Still Life

Since my last blog post a month ago, I've taken the perishables (apple, pumpkin, and gourd) as far as I want to. I've been working on the wooden basket, correcting the curvature of the handle and trying to get the colours right, inside and out.  The inside of the basket picks up the reflected oranges of the pumpkin and nearby red cloth. The outside handle picks up the red cloth as it approaches the apple. But  I noticed yesterday how the curving handle also mimics the pattern of light on skin tones.  Moving from bottom right to top left, the handle follows a 4 colour pattern of warm darks, cool (greyish) half tones, warm local colour, and a cool highlight, before hitting a grey cast shadow and then returning to a warm shadow again. When I first painted this handle yesterday without any of the cool bands, the results were disappointing. When this area is dry, I'll add the pattern of the weaving...


Close up view:

The full setup:

Apple Work

It's a new year and time to push forward on this still life to completion.
After Xmas break, I was surprised to find the pumpkin I bought in late September still intact with little change to its colour. The two spares I bought at the same time and stored in the fridge at home did not last as long. Perhaps the dry air in the school agrees with this pumpkin...

The original apple did not make it to 2013 and I was forced to replace it. On Monday, I auditioned nine candidates and finally settled on one that is not the same shape as the original but offers similar colouring under the school lights. Plus it has some interesting streaks and blemishes that help to emphasize the apple's curviness. There's also a stem, which the original lacked.

In the last few sessions, I've worked on the red cloth, the background, and most importantly the apple itself.

The close up: 
I nearly finished the apple today. In the next session, I'll paint in some of the blemishes and streaks to add character, and then it will be done.

The full view: 

The new apple is in place.

Pumpkin Work

In the last week, I've been concentrating on the pumpkin. It's now showing signs of collapse, but fortunately the colour hasn't changed much. In these lighting conditions, I can see the following on the real thing:

• cool highlights in the upper left of the pumpkin's face which appear to me as a pale yellow-white.
• warm reflections in the contained shadows on the bottom part and right side. The base has picked up some of the warm ochres in the wood. The right side is warmed by the deep reds from the adjacent red cloth. And on the top, I can see modest browns reflected from the basket above.  For all of these areas, I mixed cadmium orange with red madder (for warmth) or mars orange (for a muted brown-orange).
• a band of cool orange-greys just above bottom shadow. These are half-tones that have been cooled with grey. The challenge for me is that they also reveal the texture of the pumpkin, especially its pits, gouges, lines, and pimples in a variety of a oranges, some warm, some cool.
• variations of a warm and intense cadmium orange on the face of the pumpkin. The area below and above the highlight seems to show the strongest orange. 

This colour pattern of cool, warm, cool and warm is not unlike what you'd see in a human face or figure. My model isn't moving but it is beginning to rot... 

Below is a closeup of this week's work, followed by another photo of the full setup.

These photos unfortunately don't capture the range of colours and values, especially in the shadows...
Nature deserves better.

A New Still Life -- and the perils of perishables

The challenge in this new painting is to paint organic objects before they perish. For this exercise--the last required still life in the Academy of Realist Art's program--students normally choose something that is common, available year-round and easily replaceable like a cherry tomato, a lemon, or a wedge of garlic. More daring students have chosen fresh flowers and fish from the St. Lawrence Market and then painted them rapidly in one sitting. (With fish, you can understand why).

I wanted to use some autumn vegetables, especially ones with unusual colours and shapes like the gourds that start appearing in the supermarkets markets in September.

The composition I ended up with consists of one pumpkin, a yellow gourd, and an apple, placed near an overturned basket with pine cones scattered about. The more I stare at the setup, the more it seems to me like the vegetables are assuming personalities. Here the apple is on trial. The pumpkin is the judge. The gourd is the prosecutor. And the pinecones are security guards.

My biggest concern was that the pumpkin would spoil before I had a chance to finish it. I started painting it first. As insurance, I have 2 substitutes in our fridge at home, waiting to stand in when needed. But it turns out that the gourd was the first to spoil, with a green mould appearing practically overnight a few weeks after setting up thie scene... The apple is doing just fine and I'm not worried about replacing it.

Below: the painting and the setup as of November 14th.

 

 

Here's a close up: 

 

 

This is the best reference photo I have of the gourd in its current position. I painted it fully this week and just need to add highlights later. 

 

In an earlier vision of this painting, I used a larger green apple, but it was too distracting.

My first gourds were elongated and more colourful but the setup didn't work.