Assignment 1: Still Life

The options available here were to choose one from a range of areas such as landscape, interiors, still life etc. and to paint it in a representational rather than abstract way. A still life painting was to me the most attractive choice because at least I would be able to control the lighting, background and subject matter without too much risk of it changing or of items being moved around by accident. I was eager to try and incorporate at least two of the techniques I tried out during Part 1, such as chiaroscuro, graded washes and to include both transparent and opaque finishes in one painting.  

Starting with a few line sketches, I later progressed to tonal sketches and colour studies. 

Some people might view this choice as rather conventional and boring, but I think it is a very absorbing genre and style and as well worthy of some exploration as any other area.

Charcoal line sketch 1

Line sketch 3?

charcoal tonal sketch 1

1. Pumpkin and candlestick - charcoal. Pumpkin looks too dominant and overbearing. Tried a few more arrangements with it but none seemed to look balanced. I added part of a circle going off the paper to the upper right. I think this helped to balance the arrangement a little, but not quite enough. 2. Removed pumpkin and replaced it with glass jug, two apples and half  a lemon, removing and reintroducing things in varied combinations. Up to this point the background was light in tone. NB not all the sketches are shown just yet, as I sent them off to my tutor without photographing them first.  3. etc. and Charcoal tonal sketch 1:
 a dark background was introduced at this point and with  it, making a comeback was the pumpkin. With an increasing sense of my lack of real progress decided to try again using the dark background. Don't know why I didn't think of this in the first place - I could now obtain the chiaroscuro effect I was toying with beforehand, much more easily. It instantly added drama, along with the artificial strong light from a spotlight at the right side. It was angled to the lower half of the set up and slightly downwards, intensifying the contrast of tones. The pumpkin  materialised on the off chance, but this time it didn't appear so dominant because there were three objects to the side and infront as well as a glass jug. To vary the texture and break up the loosely rounded forms I placed the tall narrow curved clear glass jug slightly behind to the right side. The pumpkin being only partly visible also seems to help prevent it from being over dominant.

Following this I did two colour studies in chalk pastel, then acrylic. Chalk pastel: the range of some hues was limited - couldn't get the acid greens of the apples with what I had. Used yellow and blues mixed with some greens - just couldn't get close to the actual green, similarly with the pear and pumpkin. They are actually much more luminous and bright than in the colour study. The trouble was, that all the greens and yellows I had were cold. Late discovery of an old greyhound warm green pastel helped but not enough - should have used it earlier. The real reason is most likely my lack of accurate colour judgement with pastels. Had a feeling when I used paint, things would work out differently, which fortunately they did...

part finished acrylic
colour study

finished 

For the painted colour study and the final painting I painted the dark background with phtallo blue and burnt umber using an old kitchen sponge. I now realize that this is an excellent way of covering the area quickly and relatively smoothly, naturally two coats were necessary. I scumbled over the background colour (phtallo blue, burnt umber and white)  for the lighter areas of the background. In the foreground area added a little ultramarine to warm up the blue and bring the surface forward. Then added more white to the mix for lighter areas. On the lightest parts of the objects - applied a thick white underpainting. Midtone greens on the apples from two old green mixes stored in jars, one of which was quite a very yellowy green. Added a little more blue and yellow occasionally to vary the colours. Orangey reflected shadows - raw sienna/raw umber. 

Part completed final
panting

Initially I thought this was the completely wrong hue but decided to leave it on the apples to pick up reflections from the pumpkin and pear. On the smaller colour study I tried some lighter versions of background colour in the shadows and less yellowy green on apple at back so the front one stands out in comparison. The rear apple looked artificial though. I think the mix was lacking variety in application. Pumpkin - main colour: alizarin crimson/lemon yellow used as produces more muted perhaps colder orange than from a mix of cadmium red/cadmium yellow. Cadmium yellow/pthallo blue/raw umber/cadmium for shadows on apples. Colours used on pear: raw sienna/cadmium yellow/touch of white, shadows as other fruit. Some obvious colour mistakes, in moments of madness, were made along the way, especially in shadows, which were not too difficult to cover up, thanks to acrylics being what they are. Generally throughout the painting, with the exception of the pear. the lightest areas were done with opaque underpainting of white and the overlying colours were either transparent or scumbled with both thin and opaque paint. I added touches of neighbouring colours in each piece of fruit and in the bottle.

Final painting - finished
will take another photo of this as
the reflection in the upper portion
is irritating..

Looking again at the charcoal sketch, I think it may have been a better idea to leave the bottle overlapping the back of the pumpkin because the ellipse on the bottom links the continuity of  the round shapes across to the apple on the right. I was overly concerned with using transparent glazes so as not to obliterate what little there was of the areas of white ground at the cost of some spontaneouty. I spent too much time fiddling around trying to balance lights and darks - as on the pear where I used glazes to play down the shadows then had to darken the darkest shadows again and brighten up some of the lightest areas with opaque paint. Part of the difficulty may have been much to do with using titanium white in certain glazes. I have now acquired some mixing white, which is more transparent, and hopefully will help to cure this problem in future. 

On reflection, my painting for Assignment 1 has a few features that I would like to change or do differently if attempting it again:
For reflected shadows  I would add subtle touches of colours from adjacent objects, for instance a hint of green from the apples on the facing surface of the pumpkin.
In the pear I would build up the highlighted areas with white, then cover it with a thin glaze of raw sienna and lemon yellow. I think this would give it much more luminosity. I discovered this was a trick that many of the old masters used.
The shadow behind the pear, on the apple doesn't have much depth as it is too opaque.

I can see what my tutor meant about the ellipse on the glass vessel and the top left of the pumpkin potentially benefiting from being eased back into the shadows more.
Later on I did alter the glass jug and a few other elements. On the glass jug, deciding its spout looked a bit vague, I defined it further. Then on the ellipse at the base I painted over the original with dark blue in as near as I could get to the existing hues to its surroundings - it took a few layers of paint to cover the previous one. For the revised ellipse I used a fairly dry brush paint consistency. I applied small amounts of thin glazes  in slightly varied tones to some of the dark blue background and surface tones, partly to blend in with the new mix I had applied around the base of the glass jug and to enhance some areas of light reflection, while keeping to cooler blues, blending them more than in the foreground, and to help enhance the look of depth and atmospheric perspective. This mixture/s for the glazes was added to shadowed areas of the apples and pear to suggest reflections from the dark blue cloth and on the shadow at the base of the pumpkin. I managed to push the top left of the pumpkin further into the shadows using a combination of the thin and slightly thicker glazes. Looking at it again later I think the effect would have been increased if had also darkened its left side, still it is a definite improvement on the earlier version.

Final painting post alterations NB There is 
more glare on this image than on the image above, causing it to
appear lighter  - which is not the case, I will have to try some other way ...