Lemons and Glass - Original Still Life in Oils

I have always wanted to paint plain glass. To get the transparency and "glass effect" with as minimal strokes as possible is something I find endlessly fascinating. I seek inspiration from several artists who are so good at it. This is my first ever attempt at painting transparent glass. 

Lemons and Glass
Oil on board, 18 by 24 cms (approx. 7 by 9.5 inches)
$75.00 + shipping
Click to buy

One of the days when I was cleaning my pantry and throwing out unused bottles etc, I thought this one would make good practice to paint glass. I wanted to keep the set up as simple as possible, so did not spend too much time fretting over it. The lemons and my knife being favourite objects, just found their way into the set up.:-) 

SOLD - Pomegranates and Silver #2 - Original Still life in Oils

I signed up for the 30 in 30 challenge this month, knowing fully well that I would not be able to paint the first five days. We left India on the 5th early morning and reached here later on the 5th. The house and my mind are in a complete mess, after a month long vacation. To top it, we have school starting tomorrow and had to prepare the kiddo to get back to her routine. We have not yet unpacked everything, but I could manage to squeeze in some time at the easel today. I hope to catch up for the missed days over the coming weekends. 

Pomegranates and Silver #2
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
$50.00 + shipping
SOLD.

The other day when I painted these fruits in my mom's kitchen, I had clicked them from another angle. That's what I wanted to paint today. I am happy with how the vessel turned out. If I may add, the photo doesn't clearly show all the variations in the reds. Thank you for looking! 

30 in 30, #1 - Pomegranates and Silver, Original Still Life in Oils

I am very very excited to start the second 30 in 30 challenge this year, hosted by Leslie. In January, I was getting back to painting after a two year break. I was extremely rusty and could complete only 11 paintings in 30 days. I was too ambitious on a few days, starting bigger sized paintings that took me more than a day to finish. I am definitely at a better place this time and would aim to do 30 paintings. I am also sticking to the standard size of 6 by 6 inches so that they all look good together. I do not want to waste precious time in deciding what size to paint on. 

I am currently in India visiting family and would get back to Germany only on the 5th. I had planned to paint 5 pieces in advance before I left Germany itself. That never happened, because there was always something else popping up. So I painted these here in India, setting up a very simple still life on my mom's kitchen counter. Pomegranates are subjects that I have never painted before, mainly because they are hardly available in Germany. They are so rare and expensive. This gorgeous and yummy fruit however is abundant in India and these two inspired me to get going today. 

Pomegranates and silver
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
$50.00
Click to buy

My theme for the challenge would be "A little bit of red". Well not exactly a little bit, sometimes a bit more too :-) I was not very keen on picking a theme, what I intend to focus on instead is specific areas in which I need improvement. I can't wait to see what the others have to post, it's going to be a great month! 

'Me time' - WIP

Continuing my efforts to come up with my own compositions, I have ventured into this one combining several pictures of Monet’s gardens at Giverny, France. The references have been used with the permission of some fabulous photographers at flickr. Right now the painting is in its formative stages and looks quite tight, but I hope to get an impressionistic effect going further. I am also not happy with the richness of the color so far, it looks so dull. I need to work on this a lot more, and if I am still not satisfied, I will go in for my oil paints. I have never tried how oil works on top of acrylics, and I am quite excited to try that out.

Me time - stage 1
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I am mostly a waterfall or sea kind of person, I love wild waters. Still waters don’t excite me much, but this is a kind of place that I would like to spend some time with myself. That’s what made me add a figure in the pic. I could just go on staring at the waters and those ripples, doing nothing else! Seen above is the initial stage where I have just outlined the lady.

Me time - stage 2
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I have very crudely indicated some waterlilies in the water. I was in a dilemma whether to have a couple of swans or waterlilies, and have gone with the lilies as of now, since they look more like Monet! The water and the bridge are mostly green, and they all look messed up now. I will be making the bridge a lot lighter and differentiating it from the waters.

Me time - stage 3
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I wanted to give the lady a nice flowing dress, like those of olden times. I felt it would give a old masters kind of look to the image. I have changed that now, have made the dress rather straight forward. I have also tilted her body to be facing the pond, so that she looks more 'in' the scene. I have also reduced the size of the lady, I felt she look huge before! Blue was my first choice for the colour of the dress, since I love blues. But now I don't like what I have done, since the whole painting is so full of cool colours. I am thinking I will make it peach, or even mild yellow. That should make the figure stand out. The background needs a lot more detailing too.

I have not touched this in a week since I have been busy with my cousin’s wedding and other stuff. We have a holiday tomorrow, and I hope to get some work done on this. So you guys can expect an update on Friday.

Autumn Woods - completed

Did anyone feel that my maples were a bit too yellow last time? Well I felt so, and I had to do something about it. That’s probably not the only reason why they look like gulmohars and not maples, but I wasn’t too happy with the leaves. I added some flesh tint on them to make them brighter, and darkened the crimson on the other side.

Autumn Woods
Acrylics on Canvas, 18 * 36 inches
(c) Nithya Swaminathan
Original Available

In my previous update, since the leaves had a lot of yellow and were surrounded by more of green and yellows last time, they were getting lost in the grayscale. The barks had a good range of values, but the leaves looked quite flat. I have changed that by adding a lot of dark blues surrounding the leaves, to push forward the maple leaves. And then I correspondingly reduced the yellows in the sunlit areas of the birch barks as well.

Some closeups of the painting for you guys. First is the closeup of the reflections. The reflections have been done by adding the barks first as bright as possible, and then doing several washes of blues and greens, and some browns here and there. Finally to get a better feel of water, I have added some dried leaves floating here and there. I am pretty happy with the reflections overall except for those of the maple leaves. The orange kinda sticks out. I have already got suggestions to tackle it, will probably be washing it over with some darker hues.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

This is a closer look at the middle part of the painting, the ferns and their reflections. This is also my favorite portion of the picture, the part that I am really happy about. I went about randomly doing the ferns but they turned out quite well.I also added some highlights on the ferns. And instead of having the bushes on either side look alike, I made one side have tall grasses. And the middle part is supposed to be a path of some sort, though it may not look like one.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

As I had already mentioned in the previous post, I felt like adding a couple of rocks in the middle. They look really nice, I can tell you. I like the mood that the rocks add, I feel like gingerly stepping on them and walking into those woods, ha!

Autumn Woods - Greyscale
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

Finally, a look at the grey scale, to determine the values in the painting. In this version, I am able to differentiate the background foliage from the maple leaves, which was missing in the previous version. I am fairly happy again with this as well.

While I was checking out slide.com, I just put together the WIP images of this painting and got a slide show done, aint it cool? Shows the flow of the painting from scratch to finish, more importantly shows me my own thought process, how I went off track at several places etc etc. It provides a good learning for me.

Here is a link to this thread at Wetcanvas. Have a look at the amazing results produced by the other artists as well. Such different paintings produced from one image. Awesome fun!

Autumn Woods - an update

I was absolutely dissatisfied with the leaves that I had begun in this painting. I had only done the initial layer and there was still a long way to go, but the first step itself was not in the right direction I felt. Being the oil painter that I am, I had this urge to pick up my palette knife and paint to my heart's content. And yeah, thats exactly what I did.

Autumn Woods - Stage 5
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I have no clue if acrylic painters actually use the palette knife, this was the first time I did. I have used it with oil paintings, and I love the textures the knife generates. My leaves now have got that texture too and I am liking it. The end result is satisfying, though they look like gulmohars and not maples, LOL! The reference image has no clear direction of light, which I wanted to change. Hence I introduced some light from the right side and pushed the darks in the shadows with a lot of blue. Also, I introduced some flesh tint and mild yellows in the barks that face the sunlight, to bring in the sunlit effect. Wonder if I have succeeded fully.

Autumn Woods - detail close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

What you see above is a little close up of the leaves, how haphazardly they are done without any actual leaf shapes. I love doing that. I simply picked up some scarlett red, orange and lemon yellow in my knife and went about it without a thought. The dark bluish black lines behind are shadows of the leaves and branches on the trees behind. I introduced these sharp shadows also to accentuate the sunlit effect that I was trying for.

Autumn Woods - stage 6
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I think I would call the top half of the painting done, excepting the ferns in the front. They need some more highlights on them and I am half way with them. I have just begun working on the reflection, have loosely laid in the barks. When I started with the reflections, I felt like adding some wet rocks along the banks. Some rocks with a coating of algae on them. Wonder if it would go along well with the painting or work against it. You will probably get to know that tomorrow.:-)

Remembering Kumarakom - my only 'Indian' ATC

From the backwaters
pvt collection of Rose Herczeg
copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Excuse the poor quality of the scan, I am sure this looks *much* better in person! I had a blast doing that water and those reflections. Coincidentally, most of my cards turned out to have some kind of reflections, and they were all so well received. Talk about a warm group of friends!