Painting Lesson
Illustration of painting process in "Red Grapes" Classical Realism acrylic still life painting
Mid-point in the process
Finished process
SOLD
Red Grapes with Glass Bowl and Carved Wood Table
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gesso primed Masonite®
A number of people have asked about my painting process, so I’ll use this space to reveal a few points about the way I like to work.
Here, you can see a mid-point step in the “Grapes” painting and compare it to the finished version. Since acrylic is an aqueous medium, I like to keep the lights open as long as possible, similar to a watercolor, to keep the work fresh and clean. Once you close up those highlights it’s very difficult, if not impossible to get them back again with the same freshness. As you can see, I first worked fairly rapidly in laying down colors in the grapes without too much worry about blending or softening the transitions from highlights to shadows. I wanted to see where my brightest lights and darkest darks were going to be. Since I’m a southpaw, I tend to work from upper left to lower right just because it’s the most comfortable movement for me, and because when viewing a canvas or board the eye tends to flow that way across the surface. I sometimes use a colored ground over the gesso, but in this case, I wanted clear, white highlights, so I painted directly over the gesso surface.
The initial drawing was laid in very lightly with graphite, so it’s hard to see in this small illustration. As the work progressed across the surface, I could then go back at intervals and lay in either a light wash or a more opaque layer to blend and smooth the surface of the grapes. The most difficult part is in knowing when to stop at some point between the rough, spontaneous initial work and the layering process. If the layering is taken too far the work will lose some of its spontaneity.
The glass was kept fairly simple. Observing where the grapes are slightly distorted or lightened by refractions and where the colors become more cool or warm from the refracted light will enhance the feeling of transparency. The wood table needed to have a middle ground between shiny reflections and warm wood grain tones. The main problem for me was being able to get enough highlights to see into the shadows to reveal the carved forms without overworking this area. I just tried to keep a complex surface simple.
This work is available under the March 27 posting.
©2007 Copyright by Paul Wolber
