Delicious Watermelon slices

Who doesn't like watermelon?  I don't think there is anyone who doesn't.  Probably no other food encapsulates summer as much as a watermelon.

Hers is my take on the simple watermelon.  Delicious slices.  I've painted these two pieces of watermelon with just a little bit of a shadow underneath.  I wanted to give some dimension to these slices, not just make them pink slabs with a green end and some black dots.

What I did was to make the hard edge of the slice the lightest part of the painting.  normally, I like the foreground to be the darkest part of my paintings, but here I had to make an exception.  The white on the corners is supposed to, along with the drawing, make this really look three dimensional.  I think I've accomplished that somewhat.  Tell me what you think.

Hope you enjoy this little painting I did.  If you would like to see a video of it, check it out below.  Thanks for the quick read.  Stop back again for the next update.

Vegetable Still Life

Having gotten a few fresh fruits and vegetables over the weekend, what do you think I did?  Of course I painted them.  Mmmm delicious potatoes and zucchini.

This first one I actually made a video of.  You can watch the video here.

It's so fun to sit down and just paint something and have fun with it.





The second painting is one I had fun with before painting the one for the video.  It was just  a really quick test to see if I have colors and shapes mostly correct.  I think I got it.

If you like it, feel free to leave a comment and let me know.  I had fun with this, I hope you enjoyed it, and take a look at the video.

Thanks

Red Pear Redux

In a first attempt to paint red pears for my video (see video here),   I painted these pears.  I wasn't really happy with them so i started over and did what you see in the video.  I thought, however that I should at least post these that I did in preparation.

I like certain things about this painting, but there are a few I wish I did differently.  I should have put both stems from the pears in the rear pointing up.  I wanted to cross the one from the back with the one in the front, but in hindsight, I think it causes a little confusion for your eye.  Additionally, I think I should have put the red of the background color in the foreground and moved the green tinting to the back.  Doing this would have made the picture look a lot deeper.

Well, live and learn.  I was trying to do this all in 15 minutes and guess I was feeling a bit rushed.  Its still not a bad painting.  I like it.  Hope you do to...

Green Apples and a Clean Palette

 Mmmmmm, who doesn'l love tasty delicious apples.  They are nutritious, delicious, and I'm told that if you eat one a day no doctors can be around you.  It must be kinka like that garlic/vampire thing.  I don't really know why apples and doctors can't get along, but so be it, more apples for me.

For about the past month, I've been trying to use the last of all the paint I had on my palette without introducing any new paint.  In this painting I have exhausted all of my yellow, nearly all the red, and all the green.  What's left you ask,  a little vandyke brown, some purple and both light and dark cerulean blue.

These paintings were actually done with almost no paint of any kind that has green in the title.  I had just a dab of viridian, and you can see it just slightly in the top painting.  the bottom one has none.

In looking at the bottom apple, I should have put a different stem on it and called it a green tomato.  I think it turned out more like a tomato.  LOL.    Well, anyway, tomorrow I start with a totally clean palette.


Its been a long time coming that I clean and reorganize my palette.  When I first set it up I had only about 6 colors, then slowly added more, and kinda just lumped the colors together.  Now that I have read up on color theory a little bit, I really want to group things a bit differently.  I'm gonna go with some sort of warm, cool, and earthy groupings.  Wish me luck.  And while I get them all worked out, enjoy some apples.

Pears on Table

Ok, so I put my shadowing the pears.  I think it came out pretty good.  As I was learning to put shadows on, I kept hearing how shadows are blue.  I would see people put pure blue on their paintings as shadow.  While from time to time it seemed to look ok, I never thought that was a good thing to do.  I did, however, follow suit with that.  As a result, I believe I have ruined some paintings that I thought were pretty good.

To me the shadow is not a color (like blue) on top of another color.  What it is is the lack of some light on an object.  Since there is less light, the color of the object should be darker.  The shadow should be the same, or nearly the same color as the object it is on.  In this painting the shadow on the pear in the back is green, and a little brown.  Those are exactly the same shades that are in the pear itself.  On the table the shadow color changes to a darker grey, similar to that of the table.  Notice that I am not saying the same.  Since I have really mixed the colors in the grey of the table, and the greens and browns of the pears, it is impossible to make the same color.

Maybe I have begun to crack the whole shadow thing, and maybe I don't have to be as afraid of painting them anymore.  Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the pears.