Plum and Pear
Fourth of the ten pairs of objects series. I'm getting through this series much faster than the last one of ten single objects.
After the last painting, the Two Braeburns, I wanted to do something with less heavy chiaroscuro. I wanted to see if the approach I've started using with warm translucent shadows and opaque paint on areas in full light would work with less dramatic lighting. The light is basically the same in this painting, from the same window at the same time of day in similar weather, but I haven't controlled it this time, it's just falling flat on the still life.
This painting went unbelievably quickly. Recently, my paintings have all been taking about six hours to do, but the braeburns only took four hours and this one took a little under three hours. It's not that I'm rushing them or painting faster I don't think, the only thing that's noticeably changed about my approach is drawing out the paintings first, at least stating all the shadows, in thin, translucent monochrome first.
Although I'm working sight size, I haven't been very careful with the drawing on this one, usually I try a bit harder to get the forms right. Although I do think the painting suffers a little from bad drawing of the forms, my main concern is catching the light so I'll let myself off on that one, for today at least. But if I do it again I'm going to have to have strong words with myself about it. I might even have to threaten to throw myself out of my atelier, I expect better than this from myself by now. Monsieur Bargue, would not be impressed.
This is exactly the same approach as I used for the braeburns. It really seems to work. Sometimes when I do a painting I'm happy with, like the braeburns, I worry that it's just a fluke, that I hit something out of luck, and I won't be able to repeat it. Thankfully, I realised at this stage of the painting that it wasn't the case this time, this approach really does seem to give more life to the painting. Just like with the braeburns painting, I had the distinct feeling that I was watching someone else paint, someone who was better at it than me.
The colour checker is just a piece of card I've painted flat grey, which has a few holes punched in it. looking through the holes in the colour checker, blurring my eyes, I can isolate the colour. I paint little dabs of the colour I'm mixing next to the hole I'm looking through to match the colours better. It's crucial to make sure that the same light is falling on the colour checker as is falling on the objects though, or the colours will not be right. That's why I've got it angled towards the window. Especially when painting lighter areas, unless I have the same light as is falling on the still life, the colours I mix will look darker, (being in shadow,) and it will appear impossible to get the white of, say, a white cloth in full light, light enough. I learned this the hard way. The colour checker can be a great help, but, like any tool, if not used correctly it can really mess things up.
This shot also shows how far forwards I've got my easel raked, it's at an angle of roughly thirty degrees to the vertical. There's a good reason for this. The little framer, viewfinder, call it what you will, that I have taped to the edge of my drawing board is another of my little helpers. It helps me to isolate what I'm putting into the picture, to judge the values of the tones, and to frame the composition at the start. I use it on every one of these little still life paintings I do. Used like this, the framer becomes the picture plane.
That can cause problems too though, because if the framer is not pretty much flat on between my eyes and the subject, it can create distortion of the drawing when I relate points on the still life to the edges of the framer, and then to the edges of the canvas, or panel in this case. That's why the easel is raked so far forwards. Unfortunately I have one of those tripod easels with two legs at the front and one leg at the back, and pushing it over like this puts all the weight on the back leg and it becomes very unstable. I almost had it over a couple times during this painting, I knew I should have got one of those easels with square legs, now I'll have to buy another one.
It's a relief to me that this painting came out ok, that the braeburns painting wasn't just a fluke. I do seem to have progressed somewhat since I started using this glazing method for the shadows. But then quite a few things have changed pretty much at the same time on the last few paintings: I paint on gessoed panel now, with a mid-toned, grey ground. I use medium mixed with the paint. I work sight size. Probably all these things together have helped me make some progress. When I compare the last two paintings to the earliest ones, the old ones look like cartoons to me in comparison, two dimensional. It's such a relief to see some progress. When I started up painting again and my initial attempts were looking so awful, a small, irrational part of me was worried that I'd lost it completely and would never be able to paint or draw well again, that I'd left it too late. The rational part of me kept telling me that all I had to do was practice, practice, and eventually it would come back. How quickly would depend on how hard I practiced.
Thankfully, the rational part of me was right. All it takes is practice. I can see some progress now, although it's slow and I can't see it from painting to painting. It's like watching a flower grow, you may not notice it happening but gradually, bit by bit, it comes to life.
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