Showing posts with label glass challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glass challenge. Show all posts

Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Glass Challenge

Still Life with Bottle, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14."

I love a challenge, and glass is probably one of the most challenging materials to paint, so I asked our teacher, Lee Boynton, if he could set up a still life with a glass bottle in it. I had not expected such a dark backdrop for our challenge, but that is part of the fun in Lee's class.

Though the bottle reads as glass (it was filled with olive oil), I fear my composition is a bit pedestrian. In retrospect, I could have made it more exciting with different cropping or perhaps a vertical format. Of course, having a good angle also helps, and because I got there a bit late, the better positions in the class were already taken. Sometimes an unexpected perspective is what makes the composition more exciting.

I'm finding that I prefer an angle that presents more shadow than light to play with--it gives more drama to a composition. I didn't nail the colors either. The bowl was actually more of a coral color than this burnt orange, and the apples could have been better modeled. I'll have to try harder next week.