Work in progress

This one is nearing completion. It’s been a challenge to manage the very subtle adjustments in value along with changes in cool/warm hue changes.

Untitled, oil on panel, 18 x 12″

Candle, Pig, Box

This was a fun little study. Oil on canvas, 9 x 12″. It feels like it’s time for the next one to be a little more ambitious.

Work in progress

So I started a couple of paintings that did not work out. I did one session each and ended with wiping the paint off because I just wasn’t happy with them. In one case the composition was all wrong; in the other I got the balance of warm and cool colors wrong. So it goes.

Here’s the one I did yesterday. It needs some work on balancing the values (lights and darks), but overall I’m happy with it so far.

Still life study

Here is a quick single session still life study. In part it’s an exercise in using a very limited palette: just ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and white.

Oil on canvas, 9 x 12″.

The Knight’s Dream

This is a copy I did some years ago of a small painting by Raffaelo Sanzio (“Rafael”). I painted it at the same size as the original. I wanted to use the same process as the original, and my source indicated that it was done in “tempera with some oil.” That could mean a number of things. What I chose to do was prime a hardboard panel with glue-chalk gesso and make an underdrawing with ink (this was easy to do accurately because Rafael’s original drawing is still preserved.

I painted the copy in egg tempera, then added glazes in oil paint (which I made myself with pigment and walnut oil).

Later on, I discovered a more comprehensive technical analysis of the piece that showed the original was painted completely or mostly in oil paint. Oh, well.

“The Knight’s Dream (after Rafael),” egg tempera and oil on panel, 6.7 x 6.7″.

The painting, from about 1504, is is thought to depict an episode in Punica, an ancient Latin poem. Scipio Africanus, the Roman general who drove the Carthaginians from Italy, has a dream while resting beneath a bay tree in which he is presented with the choice between Virtue (Minerva) and Pleasure (Venus). Venus is draped in loose clothing, has her hair uncovered, and presents a fragrant bouquet of flowers that symbolizes sensual pleasure. Minerva is more soberly dressed and presents the knight with a sword and a book, representing duty.

On the easel

There’s a stage in finishing a painting where I have to figure out if it’s done or there is something I still need to do.

“Clamp,” oil on canvas, 11 x 9″

Leaves

Oil on panel, 8 x 10″.

The leaves kept changing shape over the course of the painting, so this shows an aggregate of the wrinkling process. There was no point at which the leaves looked just like this.

Layover

“Layover,” oil on linen, 20 x 20″.

Two paintings of a red onion

It’s the same onion. Each oil on panel, 8 x 10″.

Three Cherries and Two Carps

When painting something perishable like a cherry, you have to work quickly enough that it doesn’t go bad before you’re done.

“Three Cherries and Two Carps,” oil on panel, 11 x 14″.