Here’s my latest still life (“Lunch Break”) and its development.
Lunch Break
9" x 12"
Oil on birch panel
Hey fellow Steemians!
In today’s post I thought I would share my latest finished still life painting along with a discussion of its development.
At first I began with a very generalized block in with thinned burnt umber. My approach to this painting was particularly different in that I jumped right in the beginning with color. After the very quick drawing, I immediately realized that the whole composition needed to be shifted downwards.
Using mixtures of ultramarine blue and burnt umber, I then massed in the ground plane and with ivory black and cadmium red massed in the bottle.
While filling in the drapery in the background, I simultaneously refined the contour drawing of the bowl.
After finishing the first pass of the bowl, I then worked on its cast shadow keeping it warm in temperature.
As this painting was particularly absorbent, I then started to rework the dark background. In rendering the subtle passages in the cloth, I used tiny amounts of yellow ocher to render some of the forms and raising its value.
After working in the napkin, I then proceeded to do the same with the foreground section of the cloth facing the viewer. At this point I also wanted to emphasize the cascading light that appeared to flood all over the light blue ground plane.
Now I started to refine the bottle’s edges and fill in some of the small details like some of the reflected lights in the glass.
After refining the napkin and its shadow, I then added some details and refined edges all over the painting.
...Aaannd it's finished!
The palette I used for this work was titanium white, yellow ocher, cadmium red, venetian red, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, and ivory black.
Please feel free to let me know what you think?
Thanks for reading Everyone!
-James Hansen