Still Life Workshop

I'm taking Peter Van Dyck's Still Life Painting workshop at Gage this week. I love his work - in particular, his interiors and figures, but am taking this still life class more as an opportunity to learn from him. Here's one of his beauties:

Peter Van Dyck, Alabama Studio Interior

Day 1: Good workshop, but not too excited about my current painting. Sifting through the still life prop boxes for something to paint was a new experience for me. I've currently got a grey cloth draping a box with a brass instrument, a wine caraf, and a eucalyptus branch. Tomorrow I may add another element to the arrangement to add some complexity or humor - something more random to work with. Wish I could paint something with life in it - with blood or sap running through it! Hoping to wrestle this into something I'm happy with tomorrow... Peter's demonstrations are interesting. I'll try to get a photo of one this week.

Day 2: Good day. My painting wasn't quite as uninspired as I'd remembered, and I chose not to add a new prop to the layout. I enlarged the caraf and reestablished the structure of the painting, then really lightened the foreground and deepened the background. I worked up the reflections in the bottle and insturment. I'm loving Gamblin's Transparent Earth Yellow, and Old Holland's Green Ochre and Transparent Oxide Red. Green Ochre and Trans Earth Yellow combine to make a wonderful range of colors perfect for representing brass. The background of the painting is still its weakest part. Learned a lot about massing tones and relatively close color areas so that shadows move into their objects. Spent time looking at Emil Carlson's work. Lovely.

Emil Carlson, The Samovar, 1920

Days 3-5: No blogging for a few days. We were busy in the evenings picking up supplies for my son's 9th birthday party and attending soccer club events. I finished the first painting on Thursday morning. Here's a photo of it:

Julie Devine, Bottle and Instrument, 2010

I can see where I've made some progress in the first painting. I like the vibrating shadow cast by the instrument and the colors in the brass, as well as the light effects on the glass and raffia of the bottle. I also like the top left corner which is a bit abstract looking, and the folds of the cloth around the table. I'm still not entirely happy with the top right third of the painting, which is relatively weak. I don't think I set up my initial composition well, so tried to think this through better for the second painting. For this one I brought an object from home:

Julie Devine, Still Life with Bionicle, 2010

I was more conscious about how to frame this one and established the thrust, perspective, structure, and flow lines very consciously from the outset, following the development Peter demonstrated in the painting he worked on in class. I'm quite happy with this, but wish I'd had antoher day to work on it and deepen and enrich it with another layer of paint. When I squint my eyes, the toy looks a bit like a floral object. :) Makes me laugh.