I finished this painting last night. It is 12″ by 12″ and I started it a while ago, but I decided to withhold posting anything until completion. I’m quite happy with how this turned out. I have somehow developed a strong fondness for glass; especially clear glass. This was really fun because of all the reflections of the orange label through both glasses. You can see its color from the top of the wine glasses to the bottom.

Here are the stages of the painting.

You can tell from the last two photos how important the finishing touches are to glass.

This painting was done in two sessions. I think sometimes it takes me a long time to finish because when I like the painting at 80-90% completion, it takes some courage to keep working on it. I always have a little fear I’m going to ruin it at the end…and I am always happy when I don’t. However, it is very rare these days that anything I do ruins a painting…I am getting to a place where I have enough experience to avoid that (at least with the subjects I choose). Also, I have to make sure I’m in the right mood to work on something.

Here are some close ups of the detail.

You can see from that last one how the wine glass in front changes the appearance of the glass behind. The line of the top is broken. That is something I drew wrong because I wasn’t paying attention and had to correct on further study.

Up next: heirloom tomaters!

New

Old

I actually had a dream about how I needed to fix this one a couple weeks ago, which I find entertaining. There are some things you just can’t do quite as nicely without waiting for the paint to dry and then glazing…at least I can’t. The end result is a less flat looking flower. I am fairly happy with the result. I might be done now. I am never 100% sure.

Painting is an indulgent outlet for anyone who has a tendency to obsess over details. There is nothing more cathartic than sitting 4 inches away from a canvas for hours adjusting shades of white: pink-ish white, yellow-ish white, peach-ish white, gray-ish white, etc. Sometimes it’s like therapy.

I also thought it might be fun to show some closeups of the detail.

Up next: I have been working on two glasses of Chardonnay that I am really happy with so far. I’ve been photographing the stages and will post in hopefully the not too distant future.

I learned that blackberries are pretty hard to take good photos of…so most of them were bad. However, I did get this one really awesome photo, so I thought I would post it.

This photo has not been adjusted, edited, photoshopped or tinkered with at all. It is straight from the camera.

I love macro photography.

This is the first painting I’ve done in 2010 that is larger than 5×7.  This one is 12×16 oil on canvas. I am mostly done, but I do have one more session planned for the kind of tweaking that can’t be achieved wet on wet.

I am happy to be getting faster these days. I used to spend a lot longer working out details. Partly I think the figure drawing class I took helped, and partly just experience.

The inspiration flower came from my back yard. Not sure what it is so if you recognize it let me know. I enjoy over saturating and adjusting colors in my paintings as you can see. It’s fun.

I feel kind of cliche painting so many flowers…but they are fun and more importantly they are easy models to find, especially this time of year. Plus, flowers are pretty.

One of the fun things about this painting is that I actually took photographs of this piece and different stages to share.

the inspiration

This bush lives in my backyard. I like to paint things I meet personally.

the sketch

I don’t always sketch before I paint. But if I want detail, especially in things like flowers, then I do.

stage one

stage two

stage three

stage four

the final version

My concentration for this painting was adding drama. That’s why the shadows are more heavy than the inspiration photo above.

I’m posting this because I thought it would be interesting to document the stages of this bunny. First, I drew a fast and rough sketch of the shape.

I immediately knew I wanted this bunny to have some attitude and tribal-esque lines. So with tracing paper I kept the shape and re-drew the bunny to get the below image, which is pretty close to the final version.

Then I scanned it into the computer and imported it into Illustrator and did a live trace. This gives me a baseline to work with. The lines can be rough, and not where I want them to be…but from there I spend time moving the lines to get what I want. I’m not particularly fast at it yet. The same process happens with some of the logos I create, but I haven’t done much as complex as this bunny for any logo. So doing things like this are good practice.

I wanted to post the rough stage after the live trace, but I seem to have lost those files…

I actually had a lot of trouble that evening because I initially picked a difficult angle, and then I moved probably 15mns in and had to move a lot of the lines…so it really cut down my time. You can tell that my focus area was on the legs, and in particular the lower bent leg. The upper body looks strange because I didn’t place the fabric she was laying on which covered some of her skin. Without seeing what is covering some of the skin, the shape looks kind of odd and too narrow. Anyway…some days things click, and some days they don’t.

Week seven I was mainly experimenting with different kinds of lines. I don’t think either experiments were particularly successful, but they were interesting all the same.

I am in the middle of a painting I will try to finish and post in the not too distant future. It’s of some more pink blossoms and a glass. These days, all I am interested in painting is flowers and glass. But I think it’s just that time of year.

There are some really great buds on a bush at the back of my house right now. I am trying to decide which one of these I will paint. I’m leaning towards the second one. I really love the drama of the lighting…not that I couldn’t add some to the first…we’ll see.

The other issue was that I did these from life, so of course every time I came back to it, the lighting had changed. That’s why I tend to work from photos…but I need to work from life sometimes too. It is different and fun. I just need to get faster.

I did take a photo of these two, but of course the lighting in the photo is completely different and they aren’t posed the same way anymore either.