Stages in an oil painting - 5

This is the latest stage, where more definition has been added, highlights and tweaking were in evidence.

Elaine was ill and had to go home, leaving us to our own devices after an initial advisory comment. We all set about fiddling with our work.

I'm not too keen on my ladle yet but the pomegranate is coming on and the gilding on the cup is quite good I think.

Here's a bit of a close-up of the interesting part of the picture. Does the ladle look metallic? I don't think the bowl of it does yet. I'm trying to erase some of the reflections caused by the ugly fluorescent lights in the room but, of course, I don't quite know what to put in their place........ all good, puzzling stuff.

Happy Christmas to everyone.

Paint, draw and be merry.

Stages in an oil painting - 4

We have colour.

This session I left the background as it was, apart from darkening the shading to the lower right hand side of the jug and trying to reduce the size of the apple by going over it in the background shade. It's all a steep learning curve because you have to have the right colour (or else be able to mix it up pretty sharpish) to match last week's colours. However, the apple was still wet and so I have now smeared the edge and will have to repair it next week.

I got over-fiddly with the lemons but the ladle is coming on. 

The pomegranate is too orangey and as for the cup on the left ... that is causing me a problem because it is tonally almost identical to the background. 

I am learning so much with this painting: mainly, don't use so much white as it takes the longest time to dry, with yellow, of course.

Last class of the term next week.

Stages in an oil painting - 3

This is my painting now that I have painted in the background and foreground expanses. These large areas are covered before the detailed work on the individual objects as the colours used on the objects will be dependant on the surrounding colours.

Stages in an oil painting - 2

This is the product of the second stage, where a thin, diluted mix of burnt umber with added indigo, in my case,  is used to transfer the same light and dark values from the previous sketch to the canvas board. 

"Get those darks in !' 

 Oh no,  I'm a watercolour painter by nature ....

but I am so liking this new medium.

Stages in an oil painting - 1

This is stage 1 in the process of producing an oil painting in the traditional manner in Elaine's Oil and Acrylic class. I set up a still life and then drew it as a tonal exercise, to place the darks and lights in a pleasing arrangement. Elaine circulated and gently urged, "More darks ! More darks !"

I am too literal and will copy an object accurately but slavishly, unaware of the better composition because it is not in front of my face and I am not confident enough to ad lib shading as it may throw the whole thing off kilter.

What's a girl to do ?

Oils with Elaine.

This is in oils on paper.

Several years ago we spent a lovely holiday in southern France, west of Montpellier on a former vineyard, which had its own chapel alongside the farmhouse, now a series of gites. This is a painting of the chapel. I haven't finished yet, Elaine says: the leaves and branches on the upper left need more definition as does the building on the left. This is the tricky area of under-defining and over-fiddling.

Our palette was restricted to a primary ( in my case, cerulean) and its complementary (orange) as well as white. This is in order to achieve some harmony of colour.

Oil pastels

This was a first attempt at using oil pastels, guided by members of the RGA (Reading Guild of Artists). My Paris pastels, which were thumb-thick and buttery, turned out to be not pastels at all but oil sticks, which are pure oil paint in a stick form: no wonder they were thick and dense and impossible to blend with a dry rag. But I had bought some small Sennelier pastels from an online auction and they supplied the bright , gorgeous turquoise in the background.

It seems difficult to achieve any degree of subtlety but that is probably my lack of skill and paucity of colour range. They are easy to use, though and not as messy as the chalky pastels - I hope to do more with them.