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

Still Life Step by Step

This is a commission piece I recently completed. The commission request was to paint a section from another of my originals, capturing the essence of the image, but in a different format. The original was square and this one is long and narrow. I don't know how you feel about painting similar images in different formats, but I find it very challenging. Instead of enjoying the process and problem solving naturally, with spontaneity etc, I find that I keep asking myself, "how did I create that effect last time?" or "how did I mix that colour?" I decided to approach this painting slowly and to fight the urge to ask myself those kinds of questions. To force myself into a fresh approach.

 

 I painted my value study in Transparent Red Iron Oxide. I prefer this colour to Burnt Sienna for example, because it's transparent, and the light passes through it to the white of the canvas. Subsequent layers of other transparent colours such as Napthol Red and Hansa Yellow, again allow the light to pass through the paint to the white of the canvas, creating an inner glow in the peppers. 

 One thing that I found extremely difficult was the rounded edge of the colander. I used a grid to draw the image, capturing the turn of the bowl, and the proportions, instead of sketching loosely in paint and adjusting as I go. But during the painting process I inadvertently  made small adjustments to the edge of the bowl and kept changing the shape and losing the circle. Without the line continuum, I kept reading the shape incorrectly. I had to regrid in some areas twice during the painting process to get the shape back again.

In the end it was a lesson in both patience and persistence, and I was pleased with the outcome. But the biggest lesson on this one, was to see the painting with fresh eyes, and to not go where I'd already been, trying to second guess myself. It allowed me to experiment, improve on the outcome, and most importantly, to find the joy of painting the image a second time, as if it was the first. And that was a well learned lesson for me. How do you handle commissions and requests to paint a similar image in a different format?

Still Life Step by Step

Still Life in progress

Thanks to all of you who left such lovely comments on my last post about the TD Art Gallery Paint-In. I had planned to do an interactive painting station for the public to participate, but the weather didn't cooperate, so instead I did a painting give away. This is the grisaille I painted at the Paint-In .

Today I had a bit of time to paint, so I started adding the colour. I started the process by selecting objects and creating my still life. I set up the still life on a table my garden, trying a number possible arrangements, and finally settled on this one and photographed it. I often paint still lifes from life, but because I wanted to capture the feeling on sunshine on the set up I needed to work from a photograph to keep the light constant, as I knew I would be painting it in several sessions.




I realize that lately when I paint, I've been starting at the top of the painting and working my way down through the canvas as it prevents smudging, and as I move forward through space, I layer over the objects just painted. I'm just in a blocking in process at this point.



I now have the whole painting blocked in roughly and will start creating more form with adjustments to light and shadow, and will plan my edges and work on softening some, loosing some and sharpening others. I'll also start to add some details in the cloth etc. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a bit of time to paint again.

Still Life in progress

Step by Step - Still in Progress

I've been having a crazy week.... I had two shows to prepare for, my day job is extremely busy at the moment, and I came down with the flu, so my progress has been minimal on this painting. I tried to photograph it so that you can see some of the texture more easily. I like to create flowing lines that reflect the energy and movement of the painting. Speaking of painting, I feel like I've lost the flow on this one, so I'm going to warm up again with a few small paintings and then come back to it. Does that ever happen to you? I mean seriously, I went from bold confident strokes to fussy little "what the heck is that colour I just put on there?" kind of strokes. So I definitely need to get back in the groove.

The Federation of Canadian Artists Spring Exhibition opened on Sunday. I'm very pleased to have a piece in the show. I was sick for the opening, so I'll be dropping by tomorrow to see it. I'm sure there are many wonderful paintings in the show as usual. I'm also pleased to have a solo show of Still Life and Jazz themed paintings at a local Starbucks for the month of March. That's a fun and busy venue so I'm looking forward to that.

Step by Step - Still in Progress

Step by Step Continued

I've been painting this still life from life and needed to set it up in a place where I could leave it set up for a few weeks. I have a small studio in the basement which works well for small paintings but 30 x 30 is stretching it a bit. I finally became very frustrated yesterday because I couldn't step away far enough from the painting to see what I was doing, and I needed a light on my palette so I could see better what I was mixing. I had a light on the set up and my daylight lamp on the canvas, but I needed a third free standing lamp for my palette.  Finally I shot a picture and had it developed and I'm going to finish the painting upstairs where there is more room and light, but leave the set up, so I can refer to it when needed. At some point, I will stop using reference material altogether and just put the art into it.

I had a very exciting thing happen this weekend. Robert Amos, Art Critic for Victoria wrote a long article about the LOOK show highlighting works of a few of the artists, and I was one of the artists highlighted! I'm honoured and thrilled! He said "Claire Christinel paints the elements of her joy more carefully, but also tosses them together with strong pattern and bright colours. Her 'Tutti Frutti' would be a real pleasure to take home, I am sure." I've got to be happy about that!

Step by Step Continued

Step by Step - Still Life

 This is a new large still life painting in acrylic that I'm working on. I've switched over to acrylic because I need this painting to dry quickly. I often choose a birds eye view with graphic cropping, but for this one I wanted to incorporate draped fabric. The canvas is 30 x 30 so it's fairly large. I started by creating some movement on the canvas with molding paste,which I feel will create some textural interest, lead the eye, and add some energy. I then did a partial value study in burnt sienna to give me enough information to proceed.

This is the beginning of my colour block in. So far I'm liking it.

I've been working on loosening up my painting style and trying for more painterly brushstrokes. Some days I'm there and other days I revert back to what I know. It's important for me to always be concentrating on something new to focus on, in order to keep the bar moving higher and therefore increasing my skills as a painter. Before starting this painting I was reading Richard Schmid's book Alla Prima - Everything I Know About Painting. He has a check list of mistakes that artists often make and one of them jumped out at me. It was "Trying to paint things instead of colour shapes". Now I have heard  this said in 100 different ways during the time I have been painting, but for some reason, maybe merely because I'm at a point where I can make it make sense to me, this statement is really speaking to me as I paint this still life. If I ignore what I'm painting, squint hard and paint colour shapes, the brushstrokes will take care of themselves, hopefully. So this is my mantra for this painting, let's see how it evolves. Here's a link to Youtube of the opening of the LOOK Show and right at the beginning is a very impromptu, non rehearsed, off the top of my head interview.

Step by Step - Still Life