"Apples", and some unfinished business

"Apples", oil on canvas panel
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I haven't done a pastel still life in months, mostly because I've been painting with oil, but I still go to drawing sessions. For different reasons I think some of the better drawings are the ones that are unfinished. I felt some had a strong start, or I tried something different and didn't mess up too badly.

I really liked this pose. I think I established the lights and darks, but I ran out of time before I could get into the middle tones.
There aren't a lot of male models around, so it's a change of pace when one models for a session. That said, I liked the pose and I trying to work with value shapes while using a few lines as possible. I tried to used the ground to shape the subject and add hard edges and lines later on. Totally different from the way I'm used to drawing.

Anyway, feel free to comment.

Grapes

"Grapes", oil on canvas

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Still Life with Cherries

"Still Life with Cherries", oil on canvas panel

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Blocks

"Blocks", 8x10, oil on canvas panel

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R. O. Y. G. B. I. V.

In case there's some confusion, "ROYGBIV" stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I'm starting to really like drawing old, worn out antiques.

As always, feel free to comment.

Strawberries

And now for something completely different.... ;-)


I went about painting this still life about the same as usual, but this time I took pictures of my process. I like it when other artists show their process work, so I wanted to see how it would work with mine. My paintings almost always start off sort of abstract because I'm trying to lay out dark areas, light areas, and figure out other composition issues.








Next I start with the block-in drawing, which is basically a line drawing with colors and values added between the lines. I usually work on everything at the same time, so that everything has the same amount of completion and I don't end up focusing too much on one part of the painting and lose the overall composition. But since I was working with strawberries (the leaves wilt quickly), I finished the strawberries one by one.







In the first pic I laid out my main dark and light areas, and while I worked on the strawberries individually, I worked on the rest of the painting in stages. First I refined the dark background, added the block-ins, and then worked on values. At this point I blocked in the fruit and added some color. This also allowed me to mark the position of the fruit.







At this stage I'm still blocking in strawberries. I've refined most of the background and I'm almost finished with the bowl.











Here's the finished painting. One of the fun things about working with this still life is rendering the different surfaces, like the rust on the can and the skin on the strawberries. Feel free to comment or criticize.

Another Figure Drawing Session

It's been a looooong time since I posted something. After working on oil painting and figure sessions I realized that I haven't worked on a still life in months. I finally got started on one this last week. In the meantime here's something from one of the sessions I've been to. Over a span of about three months I've done a lot of these drawings, including a lot of bad ones. This is one of the better ones. Feel free to comment of criticize.