Linda Mann Artist

I thought that I was finished with the area, but then I noticed a few details that could be improved on in the crystal, geode, stone and surrounding cloth.

The geode needed some more punch. The right side didn’t look bright enough considering its closeness to the light source. I added some sparkling lights to the far right edge. Also the left side of the triangular hole in its center was catching some light. In both of these areas, it only required a few tiny specks of paint to make a difference! I brightened the highlights on the green stone- both the major one, and the smaller yellow one to its right. For the bigger highlight, I painted some small lines radiating out from its center. If you look carefully at a bright highlight on a shiny surface, you can actually observe these! They have to be painted subtlety, though, or the effect can be easily overdone. I also brightened the upper edge of the stone, showing the reflections from the basket above. I painted some reflected light into all of the cast shadows onto the cloth, lightening them and adding some color.

I brightened the top side of the crystal and added some reflected light to its left side. Finally, I added some scumbled lights to the raised areas of the cloth that were catching the light. To do this, I dragged a dry brush loaded with a warm light color over these areas. (I had to mix the color much warmer than you’d think, because scumbles always look cool.) The top of the weave of the canvas catches some of the paint, creating a shimmering effect that nicely conveys the look of highlights.

I thought it might be fun to compare my initial black and white study to the (nearly) finished result.

It’s turned out pretty similarly! The only major difference I see is that the background behind the basket is now lighter in value than my original conception. When I was setting the still life up, I took some photos of it to study. The background looked very dark in the photos because of the limitations of photography. The basket was so bright, that the camera couldn’t show any detail in the darks. At first, I liked this look in the photos. As I began to paint from life, however, I could see that the background was indeed, much lighter than in the photos. All of the light from the set-up was bouncing around, illuminating most of the shadowed areas.  Painting the background showing this reflected light produced a more realistic look. I have no problem ignoring reality if it would make a more beautiful and convincing painting, but in this case, reality won!

Another difference is that the value of the orange background wall on the left ended up lighter in value than in my study. I thought that the lighter value made this area more vibrant and provided a balance for the brightness of the basket without detracting from it.

Finally, it is interesting to see how a quick study can convey the feeling of a finished work. You can see this especially in the basket and the decanter, where just a few strokes of paint can capture the essence of an object. In same forms of modern art,  these quick sketches would be considered a finished result. I can see the beauty in them, but for me, they are not a finished work. As I get more experienced, I like to think that I can paint things with a minimum of fuss, and I certainly use less paint and effort to depict things than when I was a beginner. There is a certain beauty and bravura in a simply conveyed image. For a still life, though, a certain level of detail is required for it to be convincing. A still life is, by its nature, an up-close study. There has to be detail for the eye to study. Quick, loose brushwork will work for a background, but not for the main subject.

There always comes a day when suddenly, the painting seems just about finished! The changes I’ll make from now on will be subtle, but still important.

When done painting for the day, I usually place the painting in my hallway where I often walk by. I keep a notepad and pencil there, so that I can write down any corrections that occur to me. Sometimes I turn the painting upside down, or on it’s side, so I can get a fresh view of the composition. My notes from today read:

1. Shade the values more on the left diagonal bamboo band from dark to light, from left to right, so that the right-most ones are lightest.
2. Soften the edge on the shadow cast by the orange box onto the tabletop on the far right.
3. Fix irregularity in paint on the yellow background on the top adjacent to the shadow cast by orange box.
4. Soften edges on right-side handle on bronze box.
5. Think about changing the shape of the fabric fold to the right of the orange geode to be less straight.
6. Soften edges of bamboo strips at top front edge and make the light appear to bounce off of them into the darkness above.

Above is the basket after my last session.

Below you can see the progress of the wine decanter. You can see the refinement of the shapes and reflections. I corrected colors, softened edges, and added highlights.

Many people are confused by representing transparent glass. Like painting anything else, one begins by carefully observing and slowly building up the correct shapes, colors, and values. It doesn’t happen all at once. Every time I sit down to paint, I compare my painting of the decanter to the actual decanter and try to observe differences. I’ll say to myself “the dark ring in the base should be darker and cooler,’ or “there is a bright yellow highlight on the neck that is lightening the whole area,” or ” the left side of the base should be much lighter than the cloth it’s adjacent to.” I make these changes the best that I can, knowing that I’m slowly getting more accurate.

Above is a photo of the basket as I last left it. I can see now that the diagonal band of bamboo strips on the left needs to be darker, as it’s further from the light. Also, I need to add some highlights to the band on the right, which is nearer the light. Below, I’ve made those changes. I also finished covering the underpainting on the bottom right side of the basket.

At my next session, seen below, I decided to further darken the left band of bamboo and also add some highlights to the individual strip’s edges. I made the highlighted area on the right band much brighter, obliterating some details. I also brightened many of the other strips that were catching the light and made their edges soft and hazy to mimic the look of bright light glowing and bouncing off of them. I noticed that many of the small shadow edges looked rather sharp and too dark. This often happens when I make a first stab at painting shadows near a bright light. At first, it seems as though the dark area is very dark, especially when closely compared to the adjacent light. However, if I step back and take in the whole set-up, I can see that the light from the bright area reflects into the dark shadowed area, casting a light glow onto it, effectively making the shadow appear much lighter than it first seemed. It always seems counter-intuitive to paint these shadows lighter, but observation always wins!

I spent a whole day making small adjustments to the many bamboo strips- too many to point out here! I think you can see though, that the end result is a more realistic, glowing result.

In the second photo above, you can see that I’ve worked on the orange geode. I’ve added highlights to the right side and shadows to the left. I also corrected some colors. I darkened the table cloth with a gray glaze.

In my next session, shown above, I’ve scumbled in some lights onto the cloth. I corrected the shape of the small crystal. It had been too wide. I also added some highlights to its front plane. Next, I painted some reflected lights onto the top of the stone.

This area is looking pretty good to me. I’ll leave it for now and reevaluate it after I’ve worked on the rest of the painting some more.

The top of the basket and right side of the handle are the only areas with underpainting still showing, so I tackled them next. The back edge of the rim and parts of the handle will be in shadow. I’ll paint these areas lighter and then glaze over them later to darken them to the correct value. I’ll paint the lightest areas more light than they would be in comparison to the darks, because the glaze tends to obscure them more than the mid-tones. Above, on the right, I’ve covered the underpainting in those areas.

At my next session, I glazed the rear rim and parts of the handle. On the left above, is how it looked from my last session. On the right, I’ve glazed over the shadows. You can see a lighter patch in the middle of the glazed area. Sometimes, a glaze will sink into the drier layers of paint below it, and appear flat and chalky. This is called ‘sinking in’ and is very annoying because an area that you intended to look darker, appears lighter! Fortunately, this can be fixed after the glaze dries completely by rubbing a small amount of glaze medium over the area. This brings the gloss back up and darkens the area. I run into this problem constantly. I’ve read that rubbing a small amount of glaze medium over the painting before applying a glaze will prevent this from happening, but I’ve not had much luck with it. In any case, you have to rub the medium onto the sunken-in areas before you can begin to paint again. This brings them up to the correct value so that you can judge the other areas of the painting.

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Above you can see that I’ve continued to refine the bamboo strips, adding shadows, correcting colors, and adjusting the drawing (still adjusting the drawing!).

The top of the basket is getting close to the correct values and colors now. I want to add some more color to the shadowed areas, and maybe add some strokes of thick paint on some of the bamboo strips to give the area some more dimension- but not too much! Details in shadows should be obscure and muted.

I’m beginning to think that the colors in the light side of the basket are too warm. I might decide to mute some of the warmth with some cool scumbles. A scumble is a semi-covering layer of light valued paint. It is usually applied with a dry brush dragged lightly over the surface. The paint catches only on the tops of the weave of the canvas, allowing the under layer of color to partially show through. Scumbles appear cool. I could also repaint some of the bamboo strips with a cooler color, I’ll experiment to see what works. The great thing about oil paint is that you can endlessly experiment.

Above on the left, is the basket as I left it at my last session. On the right I’ve begun to work between the two large diagonal sections and the upper right portion of the basket. I’m pretty sure that the colors will need to be adjusted later, but at this point I just want to get some paint down. I’ve added some shadows and deepened the left side with another glaze. I also added some glazes and details on the stone and crystals.

Above you can see the results of my next session. After darkening the left side again with a glaze, I thought I was losing some details under all of the glazes. It also had a uniform, flat, washed-out look. To fix this, I applied thick strokes of wet paint over the glazed area to bring out some of the more important bamboo strips. This technique is called painting into a wet glaze, and it can bring dimension and texture to a flat glazed area. I’ve also begun to work on the rim of the basket

The wine decanter needed some work to catch it up to the rest of the painting. I found seeing all of the shapes very challenging, because the reflections are very complex. In the end, I just started at the top, going very slowly, comparing the canvas to the set-up, and trying to decide if it needed to be darker or lighter, warmer or cooler. Gradually, as I studied and applied some paint, I could begin to see more. The more one area is correct, the easier it is to judge the adjacent area.

I know I’ll go over this again and again, but it’s a lot closer than it was!

Next, it was time to work on the handle. A lot of this will be glazed over later to darken it. I could have simply painted it dark to begin with, but I think that a dark glaze over lighter paint mimics the look of a light object in shadow.

The colors didn’t seem quite right. No matter what pigments I mixed, the dark areas didn’t seem warm and rich enough! Maybe glazing over some of them when they dry with alizarin crimson might help. At my next session I’ll glaze the parts of the handle that need to be in the shadow.

It’s hard to judge the correct values on the basket until the adjacent areas are closer to their true values. I decided it would be a good time to glaze the background darker. I mixed a dark glaze of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. I often use this mixture as my black, as true black pigment reads as very lifeless. It’s always scary putting down a big dark area like this! I put the glaze down rather thickly, and then gently wiped away all but a thin layer with a clean cotton pad. I plan on putting down several layers in subsequent sessions, so it’s fine that it’s not yet dark enough. I often like to use several thin layers instead of one thick one. This gives me a chance to adjust the color by painting over with a different colored glaze if I need to, and also gradually to work up to the value I’ll need. It’s easier to make a  glazed area darker than lighter!

Here’s the first glaze down. I discovered that my drawing for the shadow on the wall on the  left was incorrect, so I didn’t follow the underpainting there. The edges of the shadows will need to be softer and more blurred. I’ll need to feather out the edges of the next glaze layer. I can also blur the edges of the shadows with the background colors when I rework that area.

Now that the background is closer to it’s correct value, I can start shading the left, shadow side of the basket. Above, it’s been glazed with a mixture of ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and alizarin crimson. This area will eventually be much darker, but I want to go slowly. Now I could see that large band of bamboo in the center of the basket was too light, so I darkened it with a glaze of transparent yellow ochre and alizarin crimson.

I painted the group of the stone and crystals with my first guess at their local colors. I also made a start on the black cloth. I left the cast shadows uncovered, so that the glaze underneath shows through. Shadows look more convincing if indicated with thin transparent glazes, not with thick body color. (Body color is thick, covering paint undiluted with glaze medium, often with some white mixed in, as opposed to a glaze, which is pigment mixed with glaze medium to make a transparent layer.)

I’m often frustrated at this point in a painting, because I’m not ready to refine anything yet. It all has to grow together. I get more subtle as I go!

At my next session, I’ll darken the background close to it’s finished value, so I can then paint the handle and top of the basket. I can’t paint this part of the basket before the glaze is down, because when I wipe off the extra glaze, it would smear all over it! I’ll also finish my first layer of paint on the cloth in the lower left, and put in the local colors of the stone. I don’t like to let any part of the painting progress too far beyond any other part. If I brought any part to completion before the rest, I would have had little to judge it’s color and value against, and it would inevitably be wrong!

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The underpainting is dry, so I can begin to paint! These are the colors I usually have on my palette. They are, from left to right:

lead white, naples yellow light, naples yellow dark, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium orange, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, cobalt blue, viridian, transparent ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, and raw umber.

In the container, I have some alkyd glaze medium which I mix into the paint to make it transparent for glazes. As you can see, I wear gloves to protect my hands from the paints, some of which are toxic, and all of which are messy.

I always start in a very simple manner, just trying to indicate the local colors of objects, without too much detail.  Here I’ve made a first guess at the color of the box. It’s impossible to judge colors correctly until the adjacent areas also are painted. As I progress, I’ll keep making corrections as I can compare one area to another. For the decanter, I’m making my first stab at seeing and painting the reflections, which are very complex and hard to make sense of at first. Eventually, as I get more of the shapes and colors in the right places, I’ll be able to see and add more detail. I’ve put down a dark glaze over the cloth in the upper part of the painting to make it easier to judge the values of the adjacent areas. I’ll glaze the rest of the cloth later. I didn’t want to put the glaze in on the bottom yet, because I was resting my hand on the canvas, and didn’t want to smear it.

Above you can see the local colors of the background painted in. I’ve indicated the shadows in slightly darker values. These areas will be glazed over later to make them even darker. I discovered that my drawing of the shadows wasn’t quite right, so I corrected the shapes.

Above, I’ve started to paint the basket. After all of my careful observation and drawing, I found that it wasn’t too hard to see the shapes. I did find it hard to judge the colors, though. As I said, it’ll be hard to see these correctly until I get more paint down. For now, I do the best I can, judging the correct values by dabbing a bit of paint onto my black-and-white study, and the hues by giving it my best guess. I’m sure I’ll go over most areas again, correcting, always correcting!

I’ve put a dark glaze over all of the cloth now. As I mentioned, I did this now so that I could more easily judge the values of the other objects. I’ll eventually paint the cloth over in a covering layer of paint, so I can model the forms of the cloth wet-in-wet. When that dries, I will then add glazes to show the darker areas and the shadows, and scumbles of whites to indicate the highlights.