More Still Life Step by Step

So where have I been this year? Why am I blogging so infrequently? Well...I’ve been busy with family. My parents are both quite elderly and living in Vancouver, and I’ve been travelling back and forth quite a bit, and will  continue to do so. Add to that my full time Display Design work, my art shows, my own family, the house and garden etc. and something had to give. So blogging has slowed right down, and some months painting has as well. However, I’m fortunate to live close enough to visit my parents to help them out, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. So please accept my infrequent blog posts and please send me a comment when I post, because I love to hear from all of you and appreciate the feedback.

This is another commission piece for one of my collectors. There is a series of these long narrow still life pieces coming together. They are all 24" by 12" on Gallery Wrap canvas with the image wrapping around. I applied some texture to the canvas first with modelling paste to create some energy and movement, and to add another dimension to the painting. Starting with a value study in Transparent Red Iron Oxide, I then built layers of transparent or semi-transparent paint in the fruit. I like to use these transparent colours, because the light can pass through right to the white of the canvas, creating an inner glow in the fruits.. 

The fruit bowl is cobalt blue glass with some rings of texture running around it. I started to build the reflective quality of the glass, and the beaded table center underneath.

Everything but the table cloth is now fully painted.

I completed the table cloth, added depth and colour to the shadows, and added more texture and colours to the beaded table center. Again like in my last post, this was a commission for a strip out of one of my existing original paintings, so I used my previous advise and tried to see the image with fresh eyes, trying not to ask my myself how I painted parts of the image last time. For me that's important in order to enjoy the process and not second guess myself. I have one more painting left to complete in this series of six and this next one features star fruit, something that I've never painted before, so I'm looking forward to that!

More Still Life Step by Step