Monday, February 8, 2010

"Turnips"

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"Turnips"
10 x 10 in
Oil on Canvas
This painting is of Turnips, its pretty straight forward I kept the background just straight black.  I started the painting as I usually do with a dry brush and just draw out where they will be placed on my canvas.
After finding their placements and getting the drawing where I wanted it to be I started covering the background with my first coat of Ultramarine blue and Burnt umber.  
After the background is filled in I started working on the turnips.  I apply very little paint in this stage to make sure I just get the right value and make the form turn.  If you go to thick it'll take longer to dry and you always wanna stay thick over thin if not their would be cracking in the longterm.
At this stage I have my main information filled in, now I am just concentrating in the values.  Another thing too what really helps is too constantly squint, I can not tell you how much it solves so much of your problems, it makes you see better.   The more you squint the better, details are not the answer to make a painting look perfect.  
This is the finished painting, I had fun with this the one. What I loved about it is that it forced me to squint again, I always get so boggled with details in my paintings and forget about the bigger picture.  With this painting it was different and I loved it, hope you enjoy!

2 comments:

Judy P. said...

You made plain turnips look rich and dramatic; I'm always forgetting to squint, but you're right- it really helps.
I'm so behind checking on blogs; especially bad if you want to keep up on Stapleton's!

SEILER said...

So nice Jon . . . wow!