Painting Lesson on "Le Creuset"

It's been awhile since I posted and I apologize for that. I've had one problem after another with my computers. Well, over $1500 later, I have a new laptop and a new desktop. Guess you can only put off upgrading for so long. Anyway, here I am and I have a short lesson to show for it.

My Walking buddy returned from her snowbirding with a lovely yellow Le Creuset pitcher for me to paint. I love this beauty and couldn't wait to get it on canvas. It's my new favorite and will be the star of many a painting. Anyway, here's the initial layin.

I started as usual with a basic drawing and an umber wash. This time I used burnt umber for the laying. I generally use raw umber because it's a pretty neutral color and doesn't affect colors layed over it. But in this case, I wanted a bit of warmth to infuse the background.

I started with basic shadows on the table and indicated where I would want some shadow shapes in the background. It's important to establish the "color" of your shadows right away because they often help to establish all the other value and color relationships early in the game. Also, if you're wondering what color to use in your background, often a slightly lighter shade of the shadow color can help you get started on a background color that works with the other objects in the work. I'm essentially a realist painter and a romantic one at that. So I like a warm dark background that doesn't compete with my subject. I cool it according to how much light I want in the painting and also according to the color of my subjects. Here, a warm greenish umber worked well with the yellow pitcher, red apples and white flower.

Here, I've laid in the local color of the pitcher and background. I've used some of the background color to pull into the shadows of the pitcher. This puts the pitcher squarely into it's setting - bring air around it and making it a part of its environment.

I got ahead of myself after this point and forgot to take pictures. I promise to bring a timer in with me next time and set it for 3 minutes or so. I paint rather quickly, so I moved into the finishing stages too quickly to be of much help here. I'll need to be verbose to describe what I did next.

I started quickly putting in the table top. I like to establish the colors surrounding the object to help establish color relationships as soon as possible. So I mixed some burnt umber, cad orange, and a touch of yellow ochre. In places I cooled the top with a mixture of cobalt blue and white and scumbled in into the table top. I left the reflections of the objects until after I painted them. I wanted to get the leaves in before I painted the flowers, so I mixed some sap green and a touch of cobalt and then used a dab of umber to darken the leaves. In the back leaves, I again used a bit of the background color mix to help push them back into shadow. The underside of magnolia leaves are reddish ochre in color and that's exactly how I painted them.

Now - onto the flowers. I created a mixture of white, naples yellow and a touch of background color for the shadows and brushed the shadows of the leaves in next.

I kept this mixture loose. I didn't want to tighten up too much on the flowers so I squinted at the whole flower and tried to generalize the overall shape that I saw. Into this grayish/umberish back drop, I painted the petals keeping the miture clean. I used white, naples yellow and touches of yellow ochre to create the lighter petals.

I then went back to the pitcher and put in some highlights and painted some reflections in cooler, lighter variations of the yellow. Then taking just small amounts of this yellow, I dragged my brush downward to create the reflections on the table top. Now on to the apples. These were a bit of a challenge as they were neither red or yellow nor green, but combinations of all of these. I pulled some cad red and some alazarin crimsen together and then toned the mixture with some sap green. This became my local color which I either warmed or cooled according to need. The highlight on the apple all the way to the left was basically pink, so, hell, I painted it that way. Worked fine. The highlight on the apple to the right was greenish white, so that's how I painted it. The meat of the apple was simply naples yellow and a touch of umber for shadow parts and white for the lit parts. I dragged more apple color down for reflections on the table. A tweak here and there, and the painting was done. Next time, I promise more photos.