
Happy Holidays! As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” That’s especially true of this painting because the reflections, ridges and facets kept changing appearance as I moved or the light changed, and I could have worked on it forever. I’d planned to post it before Christmas but just couldn’t “finish” in time.
This is another painting (available here) in my “Found and Free” series: both the cup and ornaments were found on walks in “free” boxes set out on the curb.
You’ll see in the steps below that I was experimenting with using Panpastels and Sofft Tools to do the initial drawing on my panel. They are amazing: the pastels go on smoothly like paint but are completely erasable with any eraser and disappear into the oil paint so there’s no fixative required.
Below are photos of the work in progress.