March 11, 2012

Reflections in Brass

 Reflections in Brass 12X16

Loved working on these brass objects!  Somehow I wanted the whole painting to shine so I had to add the bronze cloth as a backdrop to the painting.  It was interesting to add the pattern to the material and the eucalyptus leaves give off a wonderful sent as I paint!

Japanese Tea



 Japanese Tea 11X14

To follow the progression in some of my work I thought it might be interesting to see a few stages of my
development of a painting.  I always start my work with a value painting.  Sometimes it takes the form of a grisaille with grays and other times I used a very watered down mixture of ultramaine blue and a burnt sienna. I start with my darks first and then work in my medium values.  At this time I should take a break and come back to my canvas later and see if I am still happy with my composition and also see if I have rendered my still life correctly.  Usually I am so excited and can't wait to paint. This leads to more corrections as I move ahead.  Fortunately my oil paints are very forgiving!   I bought this lovely vase during one of my travels and love the warm green/gold color it presents in the still life.  I have called this work Japanese Tea.

Back to the Studio

 Oranges and Brass 11X14

It seems wonderful to be back in my studio painting after a glorious trip visiting two of my sons, two delightful daughter-in-laws, and my adorable first grandchild.  I had started this painting before I left and knew that I would have a challenge when I returned to work on it.  I have to confess that I had the oriental rug draped all the way in back of the still life.  After many hours of working on it and analyzing where I was going,  I realized that it was just all too busy and painting over all the previous work.  For compositional reasons I changed the patterns and colors on the rug.  That also created another challenge. Good to be back in my studio again!