Still Making Art

Life Gets Better as I Get Older

Tag Archives: still life


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Day 12 – Done and Signed

I’ve finished the painting. I’m calling it Fall Day’s Harvest. I sat with it for a while on Saturday, making tiny adjustments here and there, and then on Sunday morning I signed it. It’s done. I did decide in the end that I liked the background as it was.

It will be weeks before it’s dry and ready to varnish.

fall-days-hrvest-finishedThis is photographed at a slight angle to remove the glare from the overhead light. It measures 14″ x 14″. It took me a while to warm up to this photograph, but now I think this is one of my favorite paintings.

What to do next – that is the question.

 

 

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Day 11 – The End Draws Near

I’ve not photographed recently, so today’s blog shows many days of painting.

moving-right-along-12-18-16

I’ve begun the bottom cloth, and am mostly using a #8 filbert brush. I still resort to my small brush for edges and the like. There’s still a lot to do – shadows need deepening in places etc., but I can see that I’m nearing the end.

Here’s my color checker laminate to date. I still also use my color checker that I built according to Mark Carder’s design at DrawMixPaint. I find the plastic sometimes is too reflective to give me a good view.

my-color-blotches

I’m getting better and better at mixing the correct color and value without having to use the checker.

I expect to finish this this week. While I finish this up I will be thinking of what I will paint next. Usually by this time I would have settled on a subject, and even done the setting up and photographing. Even preparing the canvas. I like to be able to go straight into a new painting without having to do all the prep work. But that won’t happen this time. There’s too much going on this time of year to fit everything I want to do into the time I have.


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Day 8 – Hiatus and Paints

I’m back painting again after a forced hiatus due to food poisoning. A week or so ago I was just finishing off a tub of humus when I came upon a posting about a humus recall. “What!!” I said, as I scooped the last bit from the tub with my finger. Turns out the humus I’d just finished was on the recall list due to a possible listeria contamination.

I was consoled when I read the symptoms and found that the dizziness I’d been experiencing was a symptom of listeriosis and probably not a heart attack or a stoke, but I was dismayed that much of the next week that I had off from work was spent in bed – not really sick, but tired and unmotivated to do anything.

Today I emerged from my hazy condition and began painting again.

Here’s progress so far.

at-work-again

Back painting. See my disorganized palette?

Notes on Paints

If you look to the far right, on the shelf beside my palette, you can see several tubes of Geneva brand oil paints. As mentioned, I am a devotee of drawmixpaint. Several years ago they came out with a brand of oil paints which are not mixed with toxic chemicals. You can read all about them on their website. After having a cold for months which I could not seem to shake, I began to wonder if it was brought on by my painting during the winter in my tiny unventilated studio.

I invested in the Geneva paints, and have never gone back to my old paints, except for the rare occasions when I need a turquoise or a color that just can’t be mixed from the Geneva limited palette. I have not had any health issues attributable to painting since, and in winter I have no ventilation except for the open door to the rest of the house.

I also find that the paints suit the way I paint. I don’t add anything to them – just use them as they come out of the jar (earliest packaging) or tube.

You might think I have a vested interest in talking up the paints, but I don’t. I just want to share my experience in the off chance it will be useful to someone else.

Notice how messy my palette is? I didn’t learn that from drawmixpaint. It’s my self taught method. Hey – if it works, don’t fix it!

progress

Here’s a close up of progress so far. There’s still work to do on that basket – not quite right yet. This is a still life of one day’s harvest from my garden this summer.


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Day 7 – How I Paint

my-work-station

My work station and tools of the trade.

I thought it might be purposeful to describe a bit how I paint.

Right up front I want to give a lot of credit to a particular website (drawmixpaint.com) which is crammed full of free videos (and some you can purchase) covering every subject imaginable on how to paint in oils, from start to finish. Everything you need to know is free, and the artist teaching you is very skilled in teaching.  One of the things I was most grateful for in Mark Carder’s videos is the fact that it is all in real-time speed. There’s none of this sped up painting that leaves you thinking that you should be able to throw the paint on the canvas and get a good result. You get to see how it’s really done.

I watched every video, and built most of the tools and equipment suggested. His style suits me, but even if your style of painting differs, the information on the site is invaluable to a self taught painter like myself. (Perhaps I can’t really call myself self-taught).

Some of the important things you see in the photo above are:

  1. A black cloth covering the window to block the glare in my face
  2. A special daylight bulb overhead which allows true sight of the colors you are painting (that light behind the easel is not used for painting purposes)
  3. A high quality photo of my still-life sized to match the size of my panting
  4. Paint pallet of glass over brown paper (for ease in mixing correct colors)
  5. Color checkers – a hand built black one (drawmixpaint) and a small piece of lamination plastic on which I put dabs of paint to hold up against the photo for color matching
  6. Tilted brush holder
  7. Easel that allows perpendicular positioning of canvas (my stretcher bar has an eyelet through which I run string to tie if to the easel bar – keeps the painting from falling forward
  8. Other things I use are q-tips (the hard rounded type, not soft cotton) for removing small areas that need correcting)
  9. Small jar of Geneva Fine Art Brush Dip [you can also make this yourself – see drawmixpaint]

I don’t do everything according to the Carder method. For instance, I use very small brushes – primarily #2, #0, and occasionally a #6 or #8. I just don’t seem able to use the larger brushes well. Just my style, I guess. This does mean that I paint very slowly. Therefore, I am not able to complete an entire painting before the paint has already started to dry in places. This means that I paint from upper left to bottom right so that I am always painting wet into wet. This also means that I must be continually diligent to get the tones and values correct as I go. I don’t use any mediums that increase the drying time of the paint.

You can see in the photo above that I have laid in the background which is a quick process. Then I start at the upper left with the subject matter. I’ll do all the items on the table first, including the cloth up to the edge of the table. Then I’ll paint the rest of the cloth. I do this so that even if the table cloth has started to dry when I come back to finish it, the transition will be a natural one (in this case, light area to darker area).

I use my mahl stick almost the whole time. I don’t stand back and then reach forward and make a mark on the canvas. Sounds fun, but I need more control.

I do continually get up and stand back to see view the painting fro a distance. I find this absolutely crucial to getting it right. It’s also great fun, because it is when you step back that the magic appears.

I hope this is useful, or at least interesting.

I will talk about paints in the next entry.