"Salt & Pepper"

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"Salt & Pepper"

8 x 10 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

I found these two objects at my girlfriends great aunts house, they are so vintage looking that I had to paint them.  I can tell you I have never seen a salt and pepper looking like this, it was to good not to paint it.  I decided not to have them upright looking identical but have one on its side spilling out some salt, telling a story in a way.  This is a good break form painting fruits and vegetables, I hope to find more of these interesting objects to paint in the future.

I started with a dry brush approach as usual, no medium just a little of burnt umber on the brush.  The drawing cannot be as loose as I want it to be, I have to get the proportions right at this stage.  

After the drawing is in the level I want it to be I start filling in the larger forms and making them turn.  For the mid and dark tones I am using burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and ivory black.  Just loosely laying in the colors not worried about getting things perfectly smooth.

Then for the mid lights and highlights I used cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, and titanium white.  I have made sure that the larger forms are turning and started to smooth it out when I really did not need to in the stage, at times I just forget what I'm doing and get into my little world of blending.  You can see that I sneaking into the darks on the base with the cast shadow of the salt shaker, I am just using ivory black in this stage.

Then I just filled in the base with burnt umber, burnt sienna, and ivory black.  Again not worried about details just laying the main color so I can go in and mix on top of that color later.

Then I added the background using cerulean blue,  yellow, and titanium white.  I also made sure to soften the edges to push back some areas.

I then went back into the salt and pepper and started to work on the smaller forms, reiterating the mid and darker tones.  Then I started introducing more of the lighter tones, I am going slower in this stage so I can be aware of the subtle tones.  At times I forget but it's a good rule of thumb to finish an area at a time, it will make you finish you'r painting much faster.  At this stage I was working on the salt shaker on the left and then I went to the pepper shaker on the right.

Then I introduced lighter tones to the base and also smaller details, you can see grains of salt laying on the base.  I would of taken the base further but I just wanted to concentrate more of the attention to the salt and pepper.  This painting was a lot of fun to do, hope you enjoyed this one!