a.k.a.Brady
March 27th, 2010, 05:04 PM
Except for an aborted attempt at a red onion about a month ago, I started my first real still life over spring break.
My intentions were to show it from start to finish, with photos at every major change in the process, but alas, fate has intervened and I accidentally deleted the first 5 or 6 photos from my camera.
So, instead of abandoning the project I decided to go forward with what I have, and just describe the first few steps. My reasoning behind this is to record my thoughts as I paint, so that I can go back and see where I went wrong or right with it.
This isn’t intended as a tutorial, so I didn’t put it in the tutorial section, but I expect there will be some technical information that might help someone.
To start off I have a diagram of my studio setup, and a photograph of the still life arrangement I am painting.
In the diagram you can see that I’m sitting pretty close to the wall, and I find that it is a little too close. In the future I would move everything farther into the room so that I have the space to stand back and view the painting from a distance. This helps to see the large shapes and make sure that it looks right, which I found I had a problem with later on.
The window faces north and is at standard height. If I was painting in a real studio, and not just a spare bedroom, I would like the window to be much higher up so I don’t have to fight glare on the painting surface as much. So for now, I have turned my easel to the side to lessen the glare. I didn’t want to face the window, because then everything would be backlit.
Also, the window is my only light source for this painting. This means I can only paint when I have time in the day. I think in the future I am going to buy some color corrected light bulbs, and use them as my primary light so that I can work at anytime.
My intentions were to show it from start to finish, with photos at every major change in the process, but alas, fate has intervened and I accidentally deleted the first 5 or 6 photos from my camera.
So, instead of abandoning the project I decided to go forward with what I have, and just describe the first few steps. My reasoning behind this is to record my thoughts as I paint, so that I can go back and see where I went wrong or right with it.
This isn’t intended as a tutorial, so I didn’t put it in the tutorial section, but I expect there will be some technical information that might help someone.
To start off I have a diagram of my studio setup, and a photograph of the still life arrangement I am painting.
In the diagram you can see that I’m sitting pretty close to the wall, and I find that it is a little too close. In the future I would move everything farther into the room so that I have the space to stand back and view the painting from a distance. This helps to see the large shapes and make sure that it looks right, which I found I had a problem with later on.
The window faces north and is at standard height. If I was painting in a real studio, and not just a spare bedroom, I would like the window to be much higher up so I don’t have to fight glare on the painting surface as much. So for now, I have turned my easel to the side to lessen the glare. I didn’t want to face the window, because then everything would be backlit.
Also, the window is my only light source for this painting. This means I can only paint when I have time in the day. I think in the future I am going to buy some color corrected light bulbs, and use them as my primary light so that I can work at anytime.