Sunday, June 8, 2014

#17: Farmer's Market

#17
10" X 10" canvas paper

Inspiration: Our weekly Farmer's Market has begun. Hooray for fresh produce (although there is nothing local, yet.) I stopped by a booth that has a variety of heirloom tomatoes. They were beautiful. While they were weighing my purchase, I asked if I could take a picture of some of the tomatoes as I wanted to produce a still life. Ta-daa!

What I like about the painting:
  • The tomatoes have dimensionality and look shiny
  • I had a lot of opportunity to practice shading with different colors

What I might do differently:
  • It might be interesting to try this in an impressionistic style
  • This would be a great painting for experimenting with glazes to make the variations of color
  • I didn't pay a lot of attention to the stem and leaves, perhaps more time and effort could be spent on that area.

What I learned:
In most areas I blended the colors and I was pleased with the outcome. I failed to pay much attention to the blending on the two lines on the right side of the yellow tomato, and they aren't as pleasing.

The only yellow I had, up until this painting, was Yellow Cadmium Light. I first painted the lower right tomato with that, and it was too lemony. I bought a tube of Yellow Cadmium Medium and the color was much better.

In real life the background looks more black than it does in the picture of the painting. What I find fascinating is that I did add a bit of blue to the black, along with white to create some shading. The blue really comes through in the photo.

Photo from Farmer's Market

4 comments:

  1. I am so impressed with your efforts. I really like your critiques….I need to do that. I tend to like something or not but don't bother to do a real evaluation. I think you captured the dark purple one beautifully. Love Farmer's Market for photos altho I do get looks when I take a macro shot of a vegetable. Very happy in new home and Montrose and keeping busy.

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    1. Thanks for the positive feedback!
      With your background, I can see why you'd like the market!
      Glad you are settled - hope we can make it that way at the end of August.

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  2. Hi Dreaming! I just found your most recent paintings. I can't even come close to you when it comes to blogging and traveling at the same time. I really like your heirloom tomatoes! They are much more compelling than the photo! This may be my most favorite painting of yours so far!

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    1. Thanks! I appreciate your comments. I like it too - but this time, I think my painting looks better in person than it does in a photo.

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