"4 Pairs" Painting Process, Part 2, oil on canvas 26x46 inches

     

    This is an image of the painting "4 Pairs" in its finished state, completed in early January, it's 26 x 46 inches, oil on canvas. I'd had a different painting on these stretcher bars until last Fall. It was a landscape that I started in 2005 and worked on for almost three years.  It was called "Spring Landscape" and was sort of a breakthrough painting for me, but it ended up falling several times and had cracks in a few places where it landed. (hint, don't bring a large painting to an outdoor festival on a windy day)  I hung on to it though because I had put so much into it.

    I suppose most people have heard about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.  The main point I took away from the book is that one should only keep the stuff that brings them joy. Well, that damaged painting hanging like a rain cloud in my living room was certainly not bringing me any joy, so I gave myself permission to cut up the canvas and toss it.  No regrets, and now I have this instead.

     In my last post I wrote about the very beginning steps of this painting up through finishing the first pass. In this post I'm going to show some progression shots of the bottom right side of the painting.

     This is what the area looked like after the first pass. I like to cover all areas of the painting with my best shot at the simplified color and value because as long as there are areas of white canvas showing, my perception of relative values will be skewed.

     

Now that the canvas is covered I can start adjusting. Because I gravitate towards a full value range in my paintings, the next steps usually involve making the darks darker and deciding which points, if any, will be pure white. Once the absolute whites and blacks are decided, everything else has to find its place in between. It's like a puzzle to me. An example would be the pumpkin on the right. It's a creamy white color but the only places that I want to use pure white would be the highest highlights on it. Everything else has to be darker that those highlights or they won't read as highlights   And the highlights on the white pumpkin are lighter than the highlights on the orange one. Finding the relationships in value and color is the main activity for me in painting.

This is what the area looks like in its finished state.  I moved the orange pumpkin forward from it's original spot because I had a hard time getting the cast shadow on it to look right.  Behind the pumpkins is a shiny silver bowl upside down with a pewter pitcher on top. I was interested in the different finishes on them and thinking a lot about how they reflect light differently. In the bowl you can almost see a tall middle aged woman painting.

"Spring Landscape" 2005-2015

Painting Process for "4 Pairs", 26x46, oil on canvas (Part One)

     I started this painting about one month ago and I tried to take a photograph of it at the end of each painting session to track it's progress.  In a big painting like this I use photographs to help me transfer the arrangement to the canvas.  I do this by taking a photo at the eye level I want for the painting and printing the photo out on transparency film.  Then I use an overhead projector to project the image onto the canvas.  More often than not I change the dimensions of the canvas at this stage to suit the image.  Once I've traced the image up onto the canvas, the next step is to go over the drawing and make some adjustments.  Even though I'm starting from a projected image, I don't really want it to look that way.  I want the horizontals and verticals to be true.  I want to eliminate any arcs or distortions that the lens creates, and I want the man made objects to be symmetrical.  I don't like to make any changes to the composition once I'm painting so these first drawing steps are important to me. I don't use the photographs any more after the drawing stage unless the fruit is too far gone at a later point and I need them to finish.

     Once I sense that the drawing is in order it's time to paint.  I start by blocking in the color, usually the background first because it's such a large white area, and once it's in it will help me see the value and color of the smaller shapes in the set-up better.  So here I'm taking my best shot at what I want the background color and value to be. It always looks too dark to me at this point, but once the rest of the white is gone it will be too light.  In this first pass I like to make the paint as opaque as I can without building up any texture.

     So this was day one.  It took me a few hours to paint around all those edges. I don't want to loose the drawing at this point.

Day 2:  I'm continuing to block in, trying to find a decent color and value for the objects as I go, while knowing they will need many adjustments later. Already the background appears a lot lighter.

     Day 3: First pass finished. Everything is blocked in.  This is when the painting process gets interesting, because for me the exciting thing is fine tuning the value and color relationships.

"Chayote Squash and Bosc Pear" 9x12, 2015

      I see chayote squash all the time at my local Wegman's, where I get a lot of the fruit I paint.  I've thought pretty seriously about painting one many times but they seem so strange that I wasn't sure I wanted to do it.  The challenge of painting those puckers kept calling to me though. They definitely have a lot of personality.  This painting is headed to West End Gallery in Corning NY, along with "4 Peaches"below, and one other.

4 Peaches, 12 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

     I finished this painting about three or four weeks ago.  I was interested in the more pink colors of the donut peaches against the yellow peaches behind them.  I really enjoy trying to get the color variations of peaches while creating the illusion of a solid form.

Three Paintings Going to Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia

     I'm shipping these three paintings to Principle Gallery tomorrow for their small works show in December.   Please stop by if you are in the area.  I've had a new large still life set-up, ready to be painted for a few weeks now, and I can't wait to get to it.

One More Fig 2015, oil on panel, 6x4 inches.

     As the title says, here's another fig painting; I love painting figs.  I'm still thinking a lot about the color of the background drape.  The background drape is the same in these last three paintings I've posted, but it comes out differently each time.  I'm surprised that such a simple thing could be so challenging to paint and hold my interest as much as it does.  I tell myself that since I paint it so often I should come up with a formula for it, but each time I change my mind about what it looks like. I suppose that it's partly due to the things in front of it being different, and partly because I haven't really nailed it yet.  Not that it matters though, I enjoy the attempt.

Tamarillo

Here's one more that I finished recently.  It's 8x10, oil on panel.