Tag: fruit

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Finding My Painting Process; 10 Minute Orange Exercise

Orange structure times 4, oil on panel
Orange structure x 4, oil on 10x8" panel

I read about the Daily Painters’ 10 minute exercise (paint the same thing four times, 10 minutes each) and thought it sounded like fun. What I learned from my attempt (below) is that I need more than ten minutes to do a painting, even if it is small. So when I finished doing the exercise below, I gave myself more time, and painted the study above, exploring a way of painting that works better for me.

Orange four times @ 10 minutes each
Orange four times @ 10 minutes each, 0il on 10x8" panel

I think I’ve found a way to approach an oil painting that works for me, and it’s sort of* illustrated in the top study above.

  1. Sketch in the big shapes and indicate the lines of the planes using *thinned paint (see diagrams in previous post here).
  2. With the same thin paint (*not thick paint as I did here), fill in the shadows to indicate darks and leave the light areas white.
  3. Use both dark/light and warm/cool variations of colors to model the form.
  4. Lastly add light highlights, dark accents, details and make any other necessary adjustments.

*Sort of because originally in the top study each square illustrated those 4 steps, but I played around with the first two, adding white paint between the plane lines, and turning the thinly blocked in value sketch into a value study with black and white paint.

Categories
Lighting Oil Painting Painting Still Life Studio

Pomegranate Pom-apalooza

Pomegranate Revealed, oil on board, 9x12"
Pomegranate Revealed, oil on board, 9x12"

Happy New Year! Thanks for hanging out with me this past year! Even though I’ve had a nasty cold all week I managed to get in some pomegranate painting between nose blowing, naps, and chicken soup breaks, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped to do over my year-end vacation.

Pomegranate value study in oils
Pomegranate value study in oils, 8x5"

I only had enough energy to be in the studio for a couple of hours a day but fortunately the pom waited nicely for me. I started by doing a value study in oils (above), trying to sort out where the darkest darks and lightest lights are and just how dark and light they are.

Pomegranate quick study, oil on board, 5x7"
Pomegranate quick study, oil on board, 5x7"

I did a small study next since I knew I didn’t have more than an hour or so of painting energy. I had fun with this and feel like I’m starting to find a way to get loose and sketchy with oils.

Pom photo under Reveal bulb
Pom under Reveal bulb

I used a GE Reveal light bulb in my lamp which gave everything a pinkish-lavender cast and that’s why I named the painting “Pomegranate Revealed.” GE says they are “specially made to filter out the dull yellow rays produced by standard incandescent bulbs.” I’d bought it originally thinking it would simulate daylight but it doesn’t at all. I usually use a fluorescent 5000K bulb 40 watt bulb (equal to 150 watts) which does a better job of producing clean light.

Pomegranate Revealed - Cropped to 8x10"
Cropped in Photoshop to 8x10"

When I compared the final painting and the studies I realized I liked the original composition with less background better so I experimented with cropping the painting in Photoshop. It’s not hard to cut the board down if I decide to crop it for real.

What do you think? Do you like this cropped version or the “final” version at the top of the post better?

Categories
Art supplies Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

My Oil Painting Breakthrough: Striving Pears and Peggi Kroll-Roberts

Striving Pears, Oil on Gessobord, 6x6"
Striving Pears, Oil on gesso board, 6x6"

My friend Kathryn Law wrote on her blog about the workshop she took with Peggi Kroll-Roberts and about Peggi’s instructional DVDs. The videos focus on the things I most wanted to learn, especially creating strong value patterns and making rich painterly brush strokes, along with loosening up and having fun. I ordered the videos and watched them. Wow!

The Buddhist proverb, “When the student is ready the teacher will appear” is so true. I had to have tried and given up on so many other approaches to oil painting to become very clear on what I didn’t want, what I did want (working with the freedom and looseness I have when I sketch) and what I needed to get there (all the things Peggi teaches).

Watching Peggi demonstrate and explain what she’s thinking and doing as she does it is such a rare ability in painting teachers in my experience. Her videos answered many questions I’ve had for so long. I’ve read dozens of books and gotten great advice from artist friends, but until I watched Peggi’s videos, I just didn’t get it.

I’d almost given up oil painting in frustration but now… Yippee! Oil painting is fun again!

About the painting:

While bosc pears aren’t as pretty or colorful as other types, when I saw the way they were sitting in their container, one seeming like it was “striving” to reach, copy, or catch up with the other, I had to paint them. I used the techniques/tools I learned in Peggi’s videos and really enjoyed the painting process (and the results).

Categories
Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting Sketchbook Pages

Sketching at Pacific East Mall

Dragon Fruit, ink & watercolor
Dragon Fruit, ink & watercolor

Sketching at Pacific East Mall is always an interesting proposition because it’s almost like visiting an Asian country (without the jet lag or costs). The stores and restaurants feature food and products from all the Asian countries and most of the signage and languages spoken there are also Asian.

It was fun copying the Chinese characters on the signage for these amazing and aptly named Dragon Fruits (above). I could picture these little dragons marching in a festive parade. I’m also really curious to try eating them. According to Wikipedia they are the fruit of a cactus and have a creamy pulp and a delicate aroma.

Cherimoya, ink & watercolor
Cherimoya, ink & watercolor

Another strange fruit, Cherimoyas had wonderful pattern on them. Since the green grocer spoke no English and I no Chinese I asked Google about the Cherimoya and learned some amazing things:

Mark Twain called the cherimoya “the most delicious fruit known to men.” The fruit is fleshy and soft, sweet, white, with a sherbet-like texture, which gives it its secondary name, custard apple. Some characterize the flavor as a blend of banana, pineapple, papaya, peach, and strawberry. Others describe it as tasting like commercial bubblegum. Similar in size to a grapefruit, it has large, glossy, dark seeds that are easily removed. The seeds are poisonous if crushed open and can be used as an insecticide. An extractive of the bark can induce paralysis if injected.

Tea Shop Canisters, ink & watercolor
Ten Ren Tea Shop Canisters and Counter, ink & watercolor

At the Ten Ren tea shop, Sonia ordered a Bubble Tea, a pink drink that had little blueberry-colored and sized balls of tapioca in it. We sat at a table and sketched to their background music of 1980’s rock and roll. One song came on that I recognized and tried think of the name of the band which led to us playing Senior-Moment Trivia.  From my lame clues (big hair, blonde, nice guy with a bunch of kids, New Jersey, band named after him, there’s  a “J” in the name…Jansen…no…) she came up with name of the band as we were leaving, saving me from a tortured night of trying to come up with….Bon Jovi!

Chickens, Ducks, Bye-Bye Birdies
Chickens, Ducks, Bye-Bye Birdies

It’s a good thing I was warmed up and sketching fast by the time I came to the hanging poultry. The store was preparing to close and an employee snatched them all off the line as I began to draw the last one.

Categories
Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Junior High Pear-ings

Junior High Pearings, Oil on Gessoboard, 9x12"
Junior High Pearings, Oil on Gessoboard, 9x12"

I’m guilty of anthropomorphizing when I draw or paint. I always seem to see human shapes or body parts in inanimate objects. I see tongues, hips, elbows and other body parts in flowers, plants, fruit or even lampposts.

So when I set up this still life, the two paired pears with one alone behind them reminded me of junior high, when two girls would whisper to each other about another, who would be left out of the conversation. Sometimes I was one of the gossipy whisperers; just as often I was the one left out.

Girls having a sleep-over would phone a friend and try to get her to say mean things about someone who was there, secretly listening in. Then after she’d said, “Mary’s butt is too big,” Mary would speak up and say, “Hi, This is Mary. Thanks a lot!” The next week it might work the other way around.

I learned the hard way not to say things about people which I wouldn’t want them to hear. The lesson gets reinforced regularly by a weird sort of karma that happens to me. It almost never fails that if I do speak about another, they unexpectedly appear, often from behind me, just like in the painting.

About the painting

I painted this on a day when I just had a couple hours and wanted to paint with oils. I didn’t take time to plan the composition and did very little with the set up, originally using my black light box as the background. This is how it looked originally before I revised the background, made some adjustments between the two front pears, and glazed the painting with Indian Yellow.

Pears-Original painting
Pears-Original painting

I thought the original version seemed cold and uninviting. I like it better now, with the softer, warmer feel and the rounded shape of the “table top” instead of the harsh horizontal line.

Categories
Art supplies Food sketch Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Rubber Mallet $5.95 and Tangerines

Mallet and Tangerines, watercolor & graphite
Mallet and Tangerines, watercolor & graphite

After a lifetime of not even knowing rubber mallets existed outside of cartoons, twice in the past year while working on projects I read directions to “tap with a rubber mallet.” I thought to myself, “Who has a rubber mallet? Not me.” And then used a regular hammer which didn’t work out too well to put it mildly.

So when I was shopping for bookbinding supplies at my local Dick Blick art store and I saw a rubber mallet sitting on a nearby shelf for only $5.95 I couldn’t resist. It was just so funny looking. I have no idea why they were selling it at Blick’s and what artists would be using it for, or how it could sell for less than a toilet plunger at the hardware store.

So I found a good use for it in the studio—as a still life subject—and it fits right in, don’t you think? Tangerines, rubber mallets, why not? Maybe my next still life will be of smashed fruit and a juicy mallet. But that will have to wait for a sunny day. No way I’m smashing fruit in the studio. It’s messy enough as it is.

Meanwhile I thought I’d check out what rubber mallets are really for and I found this on About.com‘s Home Renovation tools page:

“Admittedly, the rubber mallet is not the first thing on your tool list. But once you have a rubber mallet, you begin to discover many uses. Here are some common uses:

  • For ceramic tile, it helps gently tap tile into place.
  • Laminate flooring: great for this brittle material.
  • Tap carpeting onto tacking strips.
  • A “sounding device” if you need to hear what is behind a wall or in a pipe.
  • PVC pipe work.
  • Two tight-fitting sections of drywall.”

I can’t help picturing cartoon versions of each of these uses, especially with me behind the mallet accidentally tapping something into smithereens. And how funny is it that my blog’s spell checker thinks “smithereens” is spelled correctly but that the word “blog’s” is not.

Categories
Animals Drawing Food sketch Gouache Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Sweet Pears and a Buzz with Busby

Pears on a Blue Plate, ink and gouache
Pears on a Blue Plate, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache, 7x5"

In the week and half since I gave up sugar and Splenda, pears have become my new treat. Not only are they crispy, sweet and delicious but they come in such pretty colors too. This sketch is a celebration of their gifts.

But meanwhile, giving up coffee didn’t go as well….

Busby and the Coffee Buzz
Busby and the Coffee Buzz

After five days of feeling wiped out, depressed, listless and witless I couldn’t take it anymore and finally had half a cup of coffee.  That’s all it took: within a few minutes I was back to my old inspired self again and the blues were gone. Yay!

Maybe I’ll try to quit caffeine when I’m retired in a few years, but for now, each day is too precious to spend feeling like a zombie.

Categories
Food sketch Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Fruit Fail, Flap Fail

Fruit Fail Flap Fail, graphite and watercolor 9x6"
Fruit Fail Flap Fail, graphite and watercolor 9x6"

When my toilet decided to start saving water by only doing half flushes, a knowledgeable friend took a look and said I needed a new flapper. He showed me how to remove the old one and told me to take it to my wonderful neighborhood hardware store, Pastime Hardware in El Cerrito, to get a replacement. I knew I would be going to Pastime to sketch with my Tuesday Night Sketchcrawl buddies so I waited until then to remove it.

Tonight was our sketchcrawl and it was so much fun. When I got home I wanted to sketch this intriguing failed flapper and thought it would be an interesting juxtaposition to pair it with this failed persimmon. (I waited too long to eat it and now it’s squishy and I just can’t eat squishy fruit.) This is the kind of persimmon meant to be eaten crisp.

I will post my hardware store sketches and a couple of amusing stories from our evening there, next time as sleep seems more important right now.

Meanwhile, if you aren’t familiar with the concept of something being “FAIL,” and have never seen the hilarious FAIL blog, I highly recommend a visit! Who knew there were so many ways for things to go wrong, from stupid signs, to stupid people. It always makes me laugh.

Categories
Art supplies Art theory Painting Still Life Watercolor

Better Bowl of Fruit, Better Watercolor: Now I Can Eat the Fruit!

Better Bowl of Fruit, Watercolor on paper, 7" x 10.5"
Better Bowl of Fruit, Watercolor on paper, 7" x 10.5"

I’m so much happier with the way this watercolor of my bowl of fruit turned out than the one in my sketchbook. It makes such a difference to use Arches 140 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper. It also helped that I was painting consciously and taking my time, instead of rushing through it, half asleep as I had been when I made the sketch.

Even more fun is that I made the the large porcelain bowl when I was a potter and had glazed it with two of my favorite glazes…and now I was “glazing” it again, in watercolor.

I enjoyed every bit of the process, from planning the composition, to drawing (see below) from life, to masking the whites, then painting one shape at a time, using juicy washes, adding color wet-into-wet, as well as glazing over dried washes, then removing the mask, softening the highlights and some edges.

Fruit bowl pencil sketch on watercolor paper
Fruit bowl pencil sketch on watercolor paper

Since I’m teaching a watercolor class right now, I tried to also pay attention to my process so that I could better explain to my students how and why I did what I did. I surprised myself with the range of techniques I was actually using in one painting. Even though in class we study them as separate techniques (flat wash, graded wash, wet-into-wet, etc.) you often need them all in one painting and sometimes in one passage of a painting.

(Boring technical stuff follows…read at your own risk…) For example, after the fruit, bowl, and shadow were painted I did a flat wash of Ultramarine Blue mixed with Burnt Sienna for the neutral background. Then it felt like the table top, which I’d initially left white with just a light blue shadow, needed paint too. So the first layer was a pale flat wash of Cadmium Yellow. When it dried it didn’t feel warm enough so I glazed over it with a flat wash of Permanent Rose (so that the whole table top was the pale apricot color now only seen on the right of the table top). It still wasn’t warm enough so I did another wash of Permanent Rose mixed with a little Cadmium Yellow and let it fade out 3/4 of the way across. I liked the way that looked but now the shadow was too pale. So I glazed over over the shadow a couple of times and then softened the edges of the shadow where it meets the table top.)

Categories
Gouache Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Just a Bowl of Fruit

Fruit bowl, ink, watercolor & gouache
Fruit bowl, ink, watercolor & gouache

It’s been such a busy week that I haven’t had  a moment for my blog until now. When my work week ended Friday afternoon it was time to prepare the studio for my watercolor class that started today. I’ve converted a second room to studio space for the duration of the class and I think everyone fit comfortably.

I feel so privileged to have such a great group of wonderful women artists in the class. And what troopers they were today, so determined to get the hang of doing flat washes, graded washes and glazing. By the end of the class everyone was doing beautiful, abundant, juicy washes.

I’d put out a couple of bowls of fresh fruit for class but nobody was hungry. So now I get to paint (and eat) all those yummy pears, apples and pomegranates.

After all the work on good paper today, I got frustrated by sketchbook paper that quickly muddies and doesn’t allow  reworking.  But I was so tired tonight it was either a quick sketch or nothing and since there’s been way too much nothing on my blog this week, here, at least, is something, as funky as it may be.

Tomorrow, rested up, I will try again on good paper.