Painting a Still Life on a Dark Day

Still Life with Red Onions, oils on canvas board, 9" x 12"

It was dreary as I headed to Lee's studio for our afternoon session of painting: one of our typical rainy winter days. Lee had set up two still lives for us. The ginger jar and the red onions in this one appealed to me, but I knew the colors were going to be tough to bring off.

We didn't want to use the overhead fluorescent lights, as these tend to distort the colors too much, but it was so dark in the studio I really had no idea what colors I was mixing. We opened the shutters and I kept walking over to the window with my palette to mix colors. That was marginally better. Seeing my struggles, Lee offered me a tiny light with two LED's that I could clip on to the palette, which helped quite a bit. I still couldn't see my painting very well, but the colors on my palette were more visible.

I may look for a light like this to add to my kit--it could prove useful in the future. Last summer when I tried night painting, the miner's lamp with LED's proved to be too bright for the job. This might work better.

I don't know that my colors are terribly accurate, but I think at least my values are close to true. The blue bottle was the most challenging. I am developing a greater appreciation for still life painting now that I understand how challenging it can be.

Rainy Day in the Studio

Last Class, Still Life with Oranges, oils, 9" x 12"

It was very rainy the day before our last class, so our teacher E-mailed the evening before that we would meet at Maryand Hall and work on a still life in the studio rather than go out to paint in the wet outdoors. I have to confess that still life painting has never thrilled me much, so I wasn't very enthused with the idea. But I recognize that there is a great deal to be learned from the study of still life, so I was curious to see Lee's demo and try a painting with the new insights about color I've gained.

I was a bit late getting there due to the slow traffic, and the class was starting so I had no time to set up before Lee began his demo. Verbalizing his thought process was wonderful, as usual: how and why he "edited" to select his particular composition, how he put in his main blocks of color and only after these were down and the white surface mostly covered did he begin to refine the color and shapes.

Since we were doing longer critiques for this last class and I had to lay out my palette, I didn't have as much time to actually paint as I would have liked. I struggled finding the right "val-hues," particularly for the green bowl and the blue bottle, and my shapes are not very refined, but it is amazing to see the theories translate into this painting. Strange how just the right val-hues can convey the shapes even at this primitive stage in the painting!