The cup, the cherries and the shell

I again worked on the shell today. I was a little frustrated coz i applied too much oil on the panel and then i wasn’t able to apply color opaquely. Still here’s my progress:

Here’s a closeup of the shell:

Update May 25th, 2014

Today i started painting the shell. Here’s the progress for today:

Update: May 11th, 2014

Today I worked on the reflective jar. Here’s the color stage:

I am going to work on the Jar for a few more rounds. More update next weekend ☺

Update: May 4th, 2014

Today i started with color stage:

I thought cherries would be easiest to work on, however they turned out to be quite tough. I have to make the front one more red in the next pass. Since my cherries took forever, i didn’t get time to do anything else. I started with the left corner of the cup thou. Next week i will work on my cup and the week after that on my shell. Learning for today: Don’t panic if the red doesn’t look that red. You can always do that in the next phase ☺ Also take breaks !

Update Apr 27th, 2014

Today I worked on the shell. I also did a full pass of closed grisaille again. I had to do it due to the white dots showing up from my gesso board. So here’s the finished closed grisaille this week,

Next week i start with color stage.

Update: April 21st, 2014

I just came back from my 1 month vacation. It was amazing !! After coming back i went back to painting my shell. It was tough to get back. I couldn’t see what i usually see clearly. I didn’t practice this past 1 month and yeah I could see the difference. So here’s what i did this weekend:

2 new learnings this week -

1. There are some parts of the shell that were glowing due to direct light and some due to reflected light. Its very important to know which is what. To learn that, if you put your notebook in the path of light, you will see that the spots getting direct light stop glowing while the reflected light spots still look the same. Then carefully “see” what color they each have.

2. Put good amount of paint. In some areas the amount of paint I was applying was less and that made it look like a watercolor painting. Since this is an oil painting, one should put color opaquely. Also, due to gesso, some parts of the painting had white spots. It’s important to fill them up with right amount of medium and paint.

Thats all for this week !

Update: March 9th, 2014

Today i started working with closed Grisaille layer.

At this stage we don’t go into details in light areas.That’s all for this week ☺

Update: March 2nd, 2014

Today i worked on the two cherries and sea shell. Here’s how it looks:

I was too tired this week so i didn’t spend time on closed grisaille today. The background for my project is black and the cloth underneath the subject is dark gray. My burnt umber tube had little more oil in it so the background didn’t turn out that dark. However, I was able to get the one closer to the shell, darker.

Next week i will begin with my Closed Grisaille stage. For closed Grisaille, we create 5 puddles of grays. Starting from dark to light and then white. We don’t use black but instead use burnt umber and ultramarine blue. I will update you more on the Closed Grisaille next week.

Till then, Sayōnara !

Update: Feb 23rd, 2014

Today I applied varnish to my panel and let it rest for 1/2 an hour while i got my lunch. Then I started with my first layer of color – Open Grisaille. Here’s my progress so far:

I started from the right edge of the vessel and slowly moved towards the inside. Its an interesting surface. I have reflections from the two cherries and the sea shell.

A few times, i lost one of the edges coz value wise they were both the same. However, after staring at it for sometime it became more clear. This took me almost 3 hours but it was so much fun !

Cant wait for next Sunday when i will start with my sea shell :D

Update: Feb 16th, 2014

Last week, I started working on a new still life. I spent a lot of time trying to select meaningful things, but ended up picking up a wooden mouse, a bell and a wooden porcupine ☺ Yeah, they all looked weird in a setup.

Finally, I decided to go with a steel cup, 2 cherries and a sea shell. Here’s how my setup looks like:

I see it from a different angle though. A slightly higher view. I tried to get a good photo but that didn’t work out so well. Anyhow, i started sketching these three objects on my drawing sheet. I should have sketched it on a piece of Vellum, but i forgot and started sketching on a paper. I transferred it later thou.

The sea shell was the most difficult one to sketch. Sadie (my teacher) told me about how life forms look and behave. I can explain that in math terms. for e.g. a sea shell grows out exponentially. The different parts of a shell are never parallel to each other. Its like a spiral !

So here’s my sketch on Vellum:

Next, I transferred it on to a 9 x12 panel.

Thats all i have so far. Next week, I will start with my first layer of color, “open grisaille”. Till then, bye !