Step by Step: Still Life

This past year I have been able to paint with a small group of professional artists in Maynard MA. While teaching, I wanted to take them through the step by step process that I had learned at The Water Street Atelier. Below is each step in this process for doing a still life painting.

The Drawing: this is the most essential part of the whole process. I use my drawing (done from life) to recreate the 3 dimensional world on my 2 dimensional paper. I'm mapping over the set up so many times that I become really familiar with the objects and the orientation of the light to the objects.

Transfer to Canvas: In this step, I get a printout of my drawing to scale, and do a paint transfer to canvas. Essentially its rubbing paint on the back of paper and then applying the paper over the canvas. I use a ball point pen over the printout to push the paint onto the canvas. when my drawing is transferred and dry, I go back in and do a open grisaille. This is done usually in one color, in this case I used Raw Umber (WInsor and Newton).

Poster Study: For a poster study I want to get the essence of the painting. I'm focused on getting the big shapes and the color and relationships that best I can. The painting is small ( 4 x 6) so I can work through painting it in about 3 hours. It will become a tool for my final painting.

Rolling Form: When I'm ready to paint, I start by laying in a few washes of color. When that is dried I start to roll forms. In the step by step below, you can see that I start with strings of mixed color and roll the from starting from the terminator to the highest plane facing the light. I don't want to roll to the highlight, one of the biggest misconceptions. I also don't want to be fooled by optical things that can throw me off. At this time I am using a conceptual model to render my object with my optical information that I have collected. When the whole lime is painted, I then go back and put the highlight on. The highlight has more to do with the geometry of me to the object  and to the light (the angle of incidence), rather than form painting which has to do with the geometry of the object and the light.

Building the Painting: I now go through and start to get some of the painting built up in areas like the background. I then go back and roll forms.

Final painting: At the end, I add varnish to bring back some of the dull areas of color that have sunk in.

"Coffee grinder with a Lime and Red Bottle"

Oil on Linen

2012

Thank you to Bob and Cindy Weinberger for the photography. Also to Michelle, Mary and Cindy for their support!

Todd