In Friday's Osher class, I asked my students to set up a still life of household items. I collected items that drew my artist's eye -- the colors and forms of the apples and mango, the pot-bellied, shiny copper pitcher, and the intensely cobalt blue wine bottle all spoke to me.
As I started painting, I enjoyed making shadows by mixing Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, and creating my own black for the backdrop by mixing Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. I prefer the liveliness of shadow colors you mix yourself, and varying the amounts of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber in the drape made the wash more varied, just as you see in real life.
The copper pitcher color felt tricky to create, but came about randomly as I mixed Cadmium Yellow and Burnt Sienna to make the bruised marks in the mango. David looked at my palette and pointed out that I could use the resulting mango color to start my copper pitcher. It worked beautifully. As I built up layers and added shadows, I used brush strokes to match the marks the hammer had made as it shaped the copper.
Every painting teaches you something, and this painting taught me that the still life I set up -- though a beautiful composition with rich colors -- was too complex for the hour and a half of class time I had budgeted for it. I finished the painting later, thinking that a much simpler still life would have been more manageable and inspiring.
I've included a photo of my still life. It reminded me of something Vermeer would paint.
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