Thursday, October 7, 2010

Project 1 - Final


Here is the final 50% of my first project.  In the week and a half since I painted the first 50%, I have learned so much already.  I was very pleased that I was able to carry that into the final part of this painting.   My professor is spectacular, and the other students are intelligent and helpful with all of their critiques.  I love this learning process.  Their biggest critiques about my first submission (shown below) was that the perspective was off on the pitcher's ellipse and the handle needed to be adjusted.  I had also made the shadows in the lemon too cool.  

I feel like I really made a huge leap in color this week.  If you look at these two steps of the same painting, I think I can illustrate how.  Look at the fruit.  In the first versions, the color is just off.  Granted, we were really only supposed to show three values, but the apple is kind of dull, the lemon has a shadow that is too harsh and it doesn't look rounded, and the orange is not only too yellow, but the shadow is too blue.  They are just all off.  

In order to fix the fruit, I used colors close to the local color, rather than jumping straight to the object's complimentary color.   For example, for the lemon, as it goes into the shadow, I used a dull red as the object starts turning away from the light, and then used a tiny dab of blue.  Before I had mixed up a violet from ultramarine and alizarin, which can be pretty intense, and as you see below, overpower the yellow.  


In other notes, I don't think I will be finished with my cityscape this week.  I am learning so much, including how slowly oil dries when you are doing multiple layers!

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