Still Life

Row of Cherries

It took me the longest time to figure out a composition for these cherries, mostly because I kept eating them! They were so delicious!!!

In all seriousness, I managed to get a better lighting for these ones and kept a good ratio of light and dark tones. I especially love how the skin of a cherry can reflect so much light. These almost look like Christmas ornaments, which is quite fitting I would say. And their lovely dark red color makes it all better.

Row of Cherries, Oil on Wood, 6 x 6 in., 2011

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Gala Apple 3: Demonstration

I figured I should shoot pictures of the process for at least one of these "Apple" paintings, just in case anybody out there is interested. I have been painting these on some new wood panels I bought recently. The main difference between these and the old ones and that these are raw wood and I take care of the priming, which I like in this context.

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Gala Apple, Oil on Wood, 6 x 6 in., 2011

Gala Apple 2

After my Thanksgiving break, these apples were the only thing left in my fridge. So I painted them before I ate them!

I had never painted one of these in this position before. It was tricky and I should definitely do it again in the future. The multiple sources of light also gave it a nice quality (although they did dime the dark tones a little bit) and allowed me to use the shadows as elements in the composition.


Gala Apple, Oil on Wood, 6 x 6 in., 2011

I think this is going to become a good template for future still life paintings. I like the minimalistic quality of this composition. Maybe I should go grocery shopping and get other kinds of apples, too! That's an interesting idea...

Gala Apple 1

I was going to eat this apple yesterday and then I started to look at it, analyzing its shape and color patterns. I like Gala apples the best because of their flavor, but I also enjoy looking at their pinkish peel, that fashions little touches of red and yellow. It is definitely a challenge to paint, something that might take some practice to get right.

Gala Apple, Oil on Wood, 6 x 6 in. 2011

As of now, I just want to keep it simple and relatively fast. One sitting, minor retouching. One thing I noticed is that I had been using lots of photo references lately, so I decided to do some real life alla prima paintings to keep my depth perception chops in check.