Garlic and Peach
This is the second of the ten pairs of objects series, and again features the garlic centre stage. Support role this time is taken by a peach which is unfortunately past it's best, but it made it through the painting. Well done peach.
This one was done sight-size again, standing about four feet back from the easel. Working sight-size had most effect on this one in the initial stages, when I was drawing the painting out and did a lot of visual checking. After the last painting I'd made my mind up to rough out the whole painting in tone first this time, using medium mixed with the paint and letting the ground show through. The plan with this one was to use opaque paint only in the areas in full light, and paint the rest, the shadows, by putting colour into the grey-toned shadows. No white was used at all in the shadows, just colour dragged into the under painting. I was careful to make sure I didn't load the paint too heavily in the shadows so that they didn't become opaque. This is more of an 'old master' way of working than I would usually use, except that the painting was still done in a single sitting. The point of painting translucent shadows where the glaze lets the brush strokes of the ground show through is to give the shadows more depth, and make the opaque light areas stand out more. I've pretty much got this idea from reading "Rembrandt's Eyes" by Simon Schama, which describes something of Rubens's and Rembrandt's technique, and from a book called "How to Paint Like the Old Masters" by Joseph Sheppard.
Sheppard's book has some good information on mediums, including some recipes for mediums intended to be similar in use to the ones used by Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio etc. It also has some in depth information on how these painters built up their paintings, or at least how Sheppard thinks they probably did it. I've been reading up on Rembrandt and Rubens in particular, and both their techniques centred around starting with a grey ground, then glazing in the shadows. Then they would start to paint in the light areas, differing here because of the way Rembrandt used to build up thick impastos of white which he glazed over and then rebuilt multiple times.
Shadows have been bothering me for a while, I can't really seem to get them to work well in opaque paint, even when the tone is right. So this painting was partly intended as an experiment to see if a different way of working, based more on Rembrandt and Rubens's glaze technique but in an alla prima style, could give me more convincing shadows, and a stronger feeling of light. It's the light I want to catch more than anything. I can worry about details when I've got the light looking right.
Here's the painting after the initial under painting stage is done. This took about an hour. This was done somewhat like a Bargue drawing, sighting across from the set-up to the panel, picking the point to be marked, and stepping over to place the mark on the canvas. The shapes of the garlic bulb and peach were drawn in as negative shapes. The paint is very thin, and is mixed with the Roberson's maroger. It had a kind of sticky consistency as it went on, much of this was done with the brush very dry, scumbled on and then rubbed in with my fingers, or cut back and rubbed out with a cloth. It was a nice way of working, very controlled and very like working with charcoal and a rubber.
Here it is at the next stage, painting in the areas in full light with opaque paint.
Once this was done I dragged colour into the shadows, brown for the shadows on the wood, orange for the peach, and a greenish brownish grey for the garlic. I did the least with the garlic, it didn't seem to need much.
It struck me whilst I was working on this one today that I was having to do a lot of work putting colour into the shadows, which were predominantly brown, which I wouldn't have had to do if I'd done the under painting with brown in the first place. For the next painting I'll do that, and we'll see how much difference it makes. It should make the painting warmer overall. I guess it would make sense to do it with burnt umber or sienna, but I only have my six colours, so I'll see how close I can get to mixing a burnt umber with my limited palette. I think it should be possible.
This way of approaching and building up a painting worked pretty well for me today, I felt comfortable with it and I think I'll be able to produce better results once I get used to it. It should be directly transferable to portrait painting too. I plan to spend the rest of this series practicing this method. Hopefully before I finish the series I'll be trying out some home-made mediums, but in the mean time I'll keep trying out the three I've used so far.
Of the three, my initial impression is that the Roberson's maroger is my favourite, but I need a bit more experience with them all to be sure. One thing I am sure of is that I like painting with medium. It keeps the paint under control, something I have a lot of difficulty with usually, and it allows me to do things, like translucent shadows, that I don't know any other way to do.
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