September 30 Paintings in 30 days - Day 4

I am not a fan of pears at all but love painting them. So when I saw these red-yellow pears at the market, I just had to pick them up. Slightly modified the previous composition and painted another pear today under different light. 

The two pear paintings would look great when hung together. :-) 

Pearched
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
Buy here

Who's hiding behind?

Continuing with the series of Pears and Grapes, here is the next one. I like this one best so far, among the three. I really like how the fabric turned out in this one. My foremost critic, the husband, is not very happy with it though. I am waiting to see what my friends at WetCanvas have to say. It is funny how different things appeal to different people, and it is impossible to please everyone alike. There were quite a few people who liked #1 better than #2, and vice versa :-) It remains to be seen what they have to say about #3 now.

Who's hiding behind?
Acrylics on Board, 5 * 7 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

The pears have a lot of color, in order to capture the lighting, reflections of the cloth on the surface of the fruit etc. However, I find the grapes are much more challenging and it is fun to paint them. The grapes need to have the translucent effect and I am not there yet. This is the first time I am doing grapes and I am having fun, learning a lot, observing more color. Of course, I have more paintings coming up in this series, and I finally hope to nail the translucence. I hope!

The pears that I have used in these set ups are of the Red Bartlett variety. They are largely red with a mix of ochre in between. My set ups are such that the red side gets prominence. And my renditions seems to be more bright red in color, which is something I have generally done, exaggerating colors a bit from real life. I like it that way, tends to have a more dramatic effect.

Bringing the pears alive

Now it is time for the pears to rise from the dead, and so finally I get to see some hues other than black and white. I have added one layer of color in the first 2 pieces. I will be adding color layer by layer, so as I mentioned earlier, I will be working on all pieces in parallel.

Let me know what you think of it.

Pears series #5 - Work in progress

Last of the first installment of the Pears. When I did the apples, I did not expect I would do beyond 5 pieces. It was only when I was doing the paintings I realized how much I enjoyed them and decided to do few more after the initial five. This time around it is different. I am quite sure I will be doing some more, so this is the first set I can say. I kinda lost patience, as always in this one. So hurried up an underpainting thats a mix of umbra and penumbra layers. I couldn't wait to add color, so I decided it was enough!

Here is the progress so far. Click on the image for a bigger view.

Pears and Fabric #5 - WIP
Acrylics on Canvas, 24 * 30 cms
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Pears series #4 - Work in progress

Some progress shots of the 4th piece in the Pears and Fabric series. Click on the image for a bigger and better view.

Pears and Fabric - WIP
Acrylics on Canvas, 24 * 30 cms
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Pears series #3

I am completing the first few layers upto the dead layer in all the 5 pieces, and then I will add color to them one by one. So all pieces are still in progress. Like the previous two pieces, this one too shows the progress from pencil drawing to the dead layer. All we need to do now is to add in color.

Pears and Fabric #3 - WIP
Acrylics on Canvas, 24 * 30 cms
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Pears series #2

Here is the next of my Pear paintings, making use of the Flemish technique as described earlier. One prerequisite for working in this method is that each layer must be completely dry before the next layer is done. It greatly aids my approach of working on multiple pieces in parallel. When my first painting is done with one layer and it drying, I work the same layer in the next painting. And so on.

I have completed upto the Dead layer and will start adding color next.

Seen above are the first 3 steps where I have done a preliminary drawing, then washed it with burnt sienna. I have then done the shadows with burnt sienna, black and marked the lighter values with a little bit of titanium white. To the left here is the dead layer, or the greyscaled version of the painting.

New series - using the Flemish Technique

I am starting a new still life series. It is an extension of my still lifes using fruits and fabric, this time using pears as the central object. The other objects used should be familiar to my readers, they are the same blue plastic container and my olive oil bottle used in the Orange and Glass series. I have planned to use the Flemish Technique of painting for this series.

The Flemish Technique was used by the Old Masters, and it is an approach to build up color in layers. This gives the painting great depth and helps achieve a very high degree of realism. A long time back there was a Virtual class on how to use this technique, in the Acrylics forum of WetCanvas. I could not participate then, but I thought this could be a good time to try my hand at something new, so I am giving it a shot. It is very different from how I work. I do a very rough underpainting, nothing detailed. Here that will change.

The technique is a 7 step process. They are :

1. Drawing - transfering the sketch to the canvas. I directly sketch on the canvas freehand. Traditionally though, a detailed drawing is to be done on another paper and is to be transfered to the canvas.
   
2. Toning the canvas - This step is called "Imprimatura", where the canvas is painted with a mid tone color. This is done so that the values can be marked better than painting on a plain white surface.
   
3. Marking the shadows - The shadows are marked using a dark pigment, like Burnt umber. Opaque highlights are then added. So this step becomes a two value process, where only the darkest and lightest values are marked. The painting will begin to emerge reasonably three dimensional in this step itself.
   
4. Dead layer - This layer, also called Penumbra, is painting the entire painting in black and white. It is a very detailed underpainting to mark all the values, so that the coloring part becomes much simpler. The values are clearly separated from the colors.
   
5. Color glazes - After painting everything in black and white, colors are added in glazes. This forms the steps 5 and 6 of the technique.
   
6. One more layer of Color
7. Final highlights - Some highlights are added in the end. While painting the dead layer, pure white is not really used. It is reserved to add in the final step.

The pictures from left to right depict the steps 1 to 3 in my first painting. I have done the sketching very roughly, washed it with a very watery burnt sienna. Then using a combination of burnt sienna and black, I have added the shadows. In the next step, I have completed the dead layer. The dead layer could be done even more detailed, but I have stopped it here and I will begin to add color next.

It was completely new to me, to refer to a greyscale of my image and do it completely in black and white. I enjoyed it, though it was quite time consuming. I hope it will not be as time consuming if I get used to the technique.

I would recommend visiting the blog of Mark Woodland, who does amazingly realistic works using this approach. The virtual classroom was conducted by him and that's what inspired me to try this. I will fetch the link to that thread and update this post later.