Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Tipping Point

© 2015 R.L. Delight, Tipping Point, 9"x12", oil on canvas

It has been stormy this week as front after front has moved through. Thankfully just wind and a lot of rain. I feel for all my East coast friends and family being buried in snow, so, no complaints here! However, it has been stormy enough to keep me in the studio instead of out on the beach. I am actually happy for the studio time. It gives me a chance to work a few things out. I decided to work on still life on stormy days. While I admire still life paintings with flowers and teacups, toys, and other household objects, I realized that I prefer to paint natural objects found on the beach, for now. I have a collection of interesting pieces of driftwood, rocks, and the occasional feather. I will be using these in a series of still lifes.

I have decided to make these still lifes fill in a few purposes. First, I wanted them to have a slight environmental narrative. I also wanted to use the painting process to work on my technique. Believe me, it needs practicing on every level! This still life is just about finished, in spite of the signature.  When I took it into the daylight, I didn't like the yellow color in the lightest areas of the rocks. I am putting this aside to dry and then I will go back, take another look, and if need be alter the color in spots. When I got it to where I am mostly happy with it, I will put it up for sale. I am also changing the light over my easel to balance the color out a bit better.

Tipping Point was painted alla prima-ish. I painted it over 3 days (including set up time). I decided the next still life will also be alla prima but this time I am going to use my notes from the workshop I took with Kathleen Dunphy and follow the process she taught us. After exploring and experimenting a bit, I want to home in on a painting process. Kathleen's makes sense to me so I will start there.
As soon as I took this off the easel, I cleaned my palette and brushes and then set up the next still life. I like to play around with the set up and then leave it overnight or longer if possible to think about and look at. If the weather improves for tomorrow, I will be heading out to paint plein air otherwise I will be starting in on the next still life.

Here are a couple of pictures from the painting sessions. I will do better on getting work-in-progress pictures on the next one.
© 2015 R.L. Delight, Tipping Point, first drawing

© 2015 R.L. Delight, Tipping Point, WIP

Stay warm and dry everyone!
-Renee

2 comments:

Theresa said...

Very nice Rene, You seem to have made great strides on the still lives. Maybe it's just the color palette, or the subject matter, but this one is lovely. Great shadows and such on the stacked rocks....

R. Delight said...

Thank you Theresa! The key is controlling the values. I had to hear it 100 time before it sunk in. I understood in intellectually but the rest of me had to catch up to that understanding. Still working on the paint handling and all but had a few "ah, now I see" moments.

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