Exercise - Still Life with man-made objects

Originally I was going to do this exercise with three vases but decided instead to paint my water/spirit containers and brushes that are on my table in the studio. 

The obvious choice of format for these was portrait – all the jars are vertical plus the height of the brushes sitting in them.

I did two sketches from different angles after arranging the jars onto a piece of black mountboard and them shining an angle poise lamp from the top right (the same direction as the window so I could work on them whether day or evening). 

In terms of tonal variation, the angle of the light shining through the glass gave strong highlights against the black (especially round the bottom rim) as well as the bright highlights on the left hand side of each piece of glass.

The white plastic container in the front also reflects on the largest of the jam jars.  As I used a black background, there are strong contrasts with the jars against the background.  Looking at this, the most surprising contrast is with the jar on the far left – the murky spirit/dirty glass is actually darker than the black background as the light is making the black card appear much lighter. 

Sketches in sketchbook 1, marked with an orange flag.

To assess the strongest areas of tone, I covered my sketch with acetate and highlighted the areas of strongest contrast, and also the interesting negative space shapes that would be key to the painting.

I decided to complete this painting in acrylic for a number of reasons:

·      Drying time!

·      As all the objects are dirty, I felt the dull, flattening nature of acrylics would suit the subjects better.

·      I could also use the acrylic very dilute and transparently in some areas like watercolour – I decided I would need to apply layers to create the effect of watermarks, dried paint, etc, and still have the form of the objects clearly showing as well as the highlights on the glass.

·      I did not want to be too fiddly with this painting – I wanted the brushmarks to show and to use the paint much more loosely.

I began the painting (A2 canvas paper) by covering the whole sheet in black paint.  I then applied a creamy, yellow paint using a scrubbing motion in a random way to give a textured background.  I then applied black paint in the same manner to the bottom half of the painting so some of the paler paint was showing through.  One of the other OCA students currently doing this course (Lynx) used a similar method on one of her paintings which was on the OCA site and I liked the effect it gave so decided to use it here.  I also felt a rougher background would suit the subject well and contrast against the very clear and defined edges of the objects.

After getting the basic shapes in, I painted out the jars in solid white paint so I could apply the transparent layers over the top and still have the light shining through.  The first jar I completed was on the far left – this is actually (very) dirty white spirit for my oil brushes which is a yellowy shade.  After getting the basic lines right, I roughly applied the colours in layers, using an old brush to portray the layers of dried paint.  For the dripped paint, I watered down the acrylic and them let it run down the paper until it was where I wanted. 

The back paint jar was quite tricky to do – as I had no brushes in it, I had to get the whole ellipse right which took me a few goes!  I painted this in layers of very dilute black, white and gray paint until I was happy with the shadows and highlights.

The white plastic container was next and again, took me a while to get the correct shape (it is still slightly out) and first began by getting the basic form in with roughly applied gray paint.  Once I was happy with the basic form, I applied the rest of the colours here – again I dripped some paint, splodged some on with a brush and used a small piece of quite hard packing foam for the blue and brown which is encrusted on the outside.  For the inside, I applied layers of different colours using the sponge and then a rough brush for the tide marks and small area of the inside that is not covered in paint!

The jar on the far right is water which has been made slightly opaque by washing out acrylic brushes – obviously the white acrylic is suspended in the water which made the brushes sitting in the jar almost invisible (in fact the only one you can clearly see is the large grey brush.  This was the end of my first sitting so I took a photo up to this point:

I realised two things at this point: the black background was at too steep an angle and needed to be made shallower to get the negative space between the two jars and also so I could add the shadows properly. 

After finishing the last jar, and adding the brushes (I did not add all of the them as I wanted to leave the composition more open), I reassessed the tonal values and strengthened the highlights in some areas.  I also lightened the black background slightly using a mix of creamy yellow and umber to get the effect of light on the black and so I could add the shadows.

In terms of colour management, I was pleased with the colours used (which are quite accurate to the originals).  The water in the left jar was slightly more green, but I decided to stay with a more bluey-green as I decided the blue contrasted well with the dirty yellow of the jar and the yellow of the brush handle.  The other colour contrast comes in using red against green in the inside of the plastic container.  I feel this piece is colourful without colour actually being the dominant element – because the colours have been toned down slightly to make them “dirty” they are bright without jarring. 

The tones achieved through the colours are also quite accurate to my original tonal sketch (photo here made monochrome to see this effect).

I think the actual drafting is OK – I hate ellipses so not sure which I choose to do so many of them in one painting! I suppose practice will make perfect eventually …  However, the only area I am not really happy with is the angle of the left side of plastic container – it should be a slightly steeper angle and a little wider at the top which would have improved this ellipse.

I feel my paint handling has improved – in this painting I have used a number of types of brushes (smooth flat and round, as well as rougher bristle brushes), hard packing foam as an applicator, and my fingers to rub the paint in in some areas.

I took a close up on the plastic container as I was pleased with the way the various techniques (rough brush, dripped paint, foam application and fingers to blend) have all worked on this small area of the painting.