January 20, 2012

Here we are with the January YOP. I chose to paint a setup that I had done. I must have taken 50 photos of different types and fruits and crystal bowls after one of my painting friends had challenged us to do so. I scoured Goodwill as I don't have many crystal bowls and this particular setup I photographed out on our deck one day in the fall when the sun was actually shining here. Here is the photo I chose.

I loved the fresh colors of all these fruits and gave me different colors to work with. I tried with and without a cloth, like the cloth better; also tried many angles to get the reflections in the crystal.

I transferred the painting to 10 x 14 from transfer paper. I really tried to get all the crystal bits in it but....not so easy. If I did it again I would transfer larger so it wouldn't have been so difficult to do the crystal.

I tried to take my time and have been working on this slowly for two weeks. Had some hiccups along the way but worked through them. Paints I used were gamboge, perm. red, C. blue, sap green, lemon yellow but also mixed some of my colors mixing gamboge and lemon yellow; blue and red and for the dark background I mixed prussian blue and magenta; grapes I mixed the sap green with lemon yellow. And other dips and daps from my pallette. Had some struggles with getting a shine on the apple and orange but did my best on that. In the end of am quite pleased with the outcome.

Don't know what the challenge for the month of February will be but meanwhile I have quite a few possible paintings drawn out and want to try a few different things.