Thursday, June 7, 2012

A White Bowl

When I woke up at 7:00 this morning, the sun was shining and it looked like we were finally going to have some good plein air painting weather.  I had a cup of coffee, ate some breakfast and started thinking about just going out in the back yard for the first outdoor painting.  Then all of a sudden it was as though someone turned the lights out.  The clouds arrived and the rain wasn't too far behind.  I could hire myself for fighting forest fires.  I could just show up with my new painting box and rain would be guaranteed.

It was time to do a painting from life, so I pulled the light box out and set up a white bowl with a blue background and green surface.  The purpose of the exercise was to paint a white object without using pure white and make it believable.  I gave myself another challenge by only using two colors and titanium white to tint them.  The palette consisted of ultramarine and cadmium yellow pale hue.

I am used to drawing the setup and then painting it with pastels.  For this oil painting, I negative painted the background and table surface which left the outline of the bowl.  I was surprised how it turned out.  Not perfect, but not too bad.  I also used a small viewfinder that came with the Thumbox.  Dumb as it may sound, it was the first time that I can remember using one.  What an idiot I am.  They work like a charm!

Anyway, this is painted on a 4 x 6 canvas panel and is painted from life.  I used Windsor & Newton Artisan water mixable oil colours.  It took about half an hour to paint.  Thanks for looking.

#45






Doug

3 comments:

  1. Good effective colors and values! It's got a bright cheery saturated feeling since you left out the red in the triad, but you've only got greens and blues reflecting on it besides what you're wearing and the color of the ceiling etc. Good symmetry and depth!

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    1. Yes, I gave myself a real challenge with only two colors in the palette. The bowl was sitting in a light box that is lined with black paper, so the only reflected colors are from the blue and green cloth. The box is very primative, but it works. Thanks for taking the time to comment, Rob. I appreciate it.

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  2. Hi Doug, I received your comment on my blog today and was SO happy to hear from you...of COURSE I remember you! I'm writing here in case you don't go back to the comment section of my blog to see my reply. So happy to hear you are doing the 30 in 30. Are you posting your paintings anywhere? If you email me through the contact tab at the top of my blog, I'll email you back...just don't want to post my email address online, but would really like to catch up...

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