Thursday, November 4, 2010

Painting Lessons


This is the painting from my third class with Timothy Tien. We skipped last week. He sets up still lives that are fraught with problems such as many similar hues, bright backgrounds, shadows on dark surfaces, and objects that barely show. I need to find the story - the main and supporting actors, the composition, the pattern of dark and light. My big mistake this time was laying in the background first, and then trying to adjust the watermelon color. Better to start with the watermelon, which should be the most vividly colored. So I redid it. Tim liked my persimmon, I understand because it reads true without being literal. It took a while. The whole time I was smelling watermelon.

I don't know why canvas boards photograph so badly.

2 comments:

  1. You have touched a new height with this work and this is so very amazing.. look forward to more from you on this concept.

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  2. Barbara, I have the same problem when photographing paintings (canvas boards and sometimes even other supports). What I find helps is after transferring pictures from camera to computer, I fiddle with the toning and the color saturation until it looks close to the original.
    I like your watermelons and persimmons - they look nice against the blue. Good work.

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