Still Life Colour Studies

We are asked to complete two of the three colour study options here: colour accuracy, complementary colours and/or colour used to evoke mood.

I chose to complete the “still life with complementary colours” and “still life with colour used to evoke mood” options, mainly because I felt these would give me more freedom in the use of colour, as well as being good technical exercises.

Still life with complementary colours

The brief here is to take two hues; one colour and its complementary (plus white to lighten tone) and to use colour in an inventive way to interpret our subject.

The colour I chose was blue (Prussian blue), and its complementary, orange (Cadmium Red plus yellow).  When we did the colour mixing exercises earlier, I found that mixing these colours gave a very wide range of hues from brown through to greens and blues, and these would complement the objects I had chosen.

After completing my prep sketches in ink and graphite, I sat and looked at the composition for a while to try to decide how best to place the colours to the best of their advantage.  To this end, I numbered my mixes from orange through to blue and then roughly noted down which colour (and tone) I would use for each section of the painting.  Although I wanted to have a strong contrast in the painting, I didn’t want it to overpower the image completely, so I decided to use the unmixed hues only in two areas – the oranges and the enamel jug.  The rest of the painting would be tertiary colours in varying tones.

The one area I wasn’t sure of straight away was the background – I knew I wanted a neutral shade which was darker than the cup but lighter than the jug and dish so I had decided on a neutral brown lightened with white.  I also wanted to add a hint of colour to the background so eventually I decided to paint some orange onto the background and then overlay when wet with the neutral brown (each applied with a small plastic filling tool) to get the broken colour effect which was textured, almost like plaster.

The table was painted in next using brown and then bright orange streaked in to add warmth.  The fabric was painted in a very dilute, lightened tone of that used for the walls.  Once I had the neutral background colours in, I began with the main objects.  The cup was painted first, quite loosely in three shades of green to describe form, with the blue primary for the decoration. 

I then painted the jug in the unmixed blue using long brush strokes, adding layers of lightened colour (plus a little green in areas) and neat white for the highlights.  I wanted to be sure of the colours on those two objects before I added the bowl – in reality this is a dark red so I had to observe the tonal variations carefully to be able to depict them in the green-blue tone I choose.  I decided on this colour so it would link with both the jug and cup, as well as being a strong contrast to the oranges.  As I couldn’t darken the green, I used the neat blue for the darker areas and shadows, and then overpainted with the green to achieve shading and form. 

The glass was painted last, as it reflected all the colours around it – blue jug, oranges, brown wall and green bowl – as well as having the strongest highlights. 

After I had finished the main objects, I lightened some areas of the background by the addition of some white paint rubbed in with a rag to give a dusty finish.

I completed this painting fairly quickly – two sittings over a weekend – as I wanted to be able to blend the colour without being too fiddly and so applied the paint fairly thickly (except on the bowl as I wanted to show a smooth, reflective surface).

Reviewing this exercise, the key issue here was colour – using complementaries and their mixes (plus white) to achieve a painting which uses colour in an inventive manner.

I actually found it quite liberating to have a limited palette to work from – this removes the “easy” option of using pre-mixed tube colours and forces you to think more carefully about how you can achieve tonal balance and interesting colour combinations.

I also had to think more in advance about how I would use the colours and the balance of the painting rather than concentrating on the actual local colour of the objects and achieving colour accuracy. 

I think the most challenging aspect (colour wise) was the oranges – as I only had white to lighten the tone, I had to work out what tertiary colour I should introduce for the shading and shadows – originally I had thought a brown mix would be best, but then decided that would dull the orange too much so instead went with a green-blue mix which I think has worked well here.

As the cup is white, and the bowl red, I had to really concentrate on the tonal variations in the object to translate this into the colours I had chosen to use.  I actually found this fairly straightforward on the cup (as it is a cylindrical object) and so creating the form was relatively easy.  However, the bowl is actually a slightly flattened form, and not fully circular, so this was quite a challenge!  The one area I do not like on the bowl is the white highlight on the left-hand side, it stops a bit abruptly and probably should have been blended a little more.

The background colour works – it is a neutral putty shade but by overlaying the opaque over the transparent, dilute orange, and leaving some of the orange (as well as some bare canvas) to show through I feel contrasts well with the jug and cup.  The use of the filling tool gives a texture but again, without this dominating the painting.

The composition is fairly simple – more or less triangular, flowing down from the jug and the diagonals of the table.  I chose this glass because I felt the cone shape reflected that of the jug in the opposite direction, and because it was moulded, would create interesting colours/reflections.  My original composition didn’t include the cup  but I added this as a vertical, and also to stop the eye following the diagonal of the table out of the painting.

There are a number of thinks I don’t like and/or don’t work in the painting:

The shadows are too strong – the colour is OK (brown overlaid with blue/green) but I think they are too dark and too solid, and the shadow by the left-hand orange is too “neat”. 

The glass – the colours are OK (although I think the orange should have been more diffuse) but the angle on the right-hand side is wrong

The basic form of the jug is OK, but the handle is a little too thick and the white highlight on top of the rim is too thick and prominent. 

The reflection of the cup is probably too pale and should have probably been more green.