Thursday, October 7, 2010

Finished fall still life

Last night I was able to make some final adjustments to the still life I painted last weekend. I think I'm going to paint one more still life while the things I've seen and heard from Nancy Guzik and Richard Schmid are still fresh in my mind. I find that I don't have to worry as much about drawing and other things while painting still lifes (figures and heads need to be much more exact) and I can focus in on developing color and brushwork. Richard and Nancy both take a slightly different approach to still life painting, but both are very concerned with getting notes of color in right away, and then judging all other decisions off of that. Richard will directly paint the shapes in the exact color, while Nancy creates an initial drawing using the local color of that object for the lines, and then puts a stroke of the exact color into the shape. I have always done notes of the lightest light and darkest dark for the sake of my value judgements, but never all the major color notes. I think this new approach will help me create more colorful and life-like paintings.

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