Since I have the problem of having a MFA in painting and can't paint, I thought I would try to learn how for a while. Nothing much to the process, just raw umber ground and drawing, then pretty much from one side to the other. Went back and glazed a couple shadows back. My pallette was simple: venetian red, yellow ochre, payne's gray, raw umber, burnt umber, and van dyke brown. Oh, and white. Bottom one was photo'd with cloud cover, so it's not as saturated.
2 comments:
These are really nice. Can't paint!? Whatever. So I take it that the bottom one is the 'finished' one?
Man, retake a photo of it on a sunny day so that we can see the true contrast. It's really throwing me off.
Really the only nit-pick I have is that I think some of the surfaces may still not have enough contrast or be dark enough. On the rock on the left, it seems like the crack between the rock and the ground needs to be darker, just that little crack. Also, the top surface of the rock where it faces away from the light needs to be darker towards the front than the back. like wise on the second level brick beneath the cup. And the shadow behind the cup onto the brick behind it needs to be darker than the shadow of that same brick onto the wall.
That's it. It would be perfect. This is really good.
The color of the shadow is throwing me off a little. Because the light that's hitting the objects seems a little cooler, (I think...given the photograph) the shadow would most likely be a little bit warmer tone.
There's also a BIG competition between 2 focal points. 1)the value contrast and multi-overlapping thing that's going on in the cup area and 2)the intense detail and value contrast on the horizontal slate (under the round vase). The focal points are pretty much equal in strength for me. I think the painting would be stronger if one of them was dulled down a bit...the easiest might be just toning down the value contrast on the horizontal slate. For various reasons, this painting looks like more of a set-up, symbolic one than an everyday scene on a kitchen table, so having a main focal point (instead of two) might lend itself to the symbolic nature of the image.
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