"Strawberry Cheesecake"

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"Strawberry Cheesecake"

5 x 7 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

Hi everyone I have an announcement, I will be offering online courses on how to paint in an alla prima manner.  It will be several courses starting with a simple subject to paint introducing the student to my approach to painting, then the course after that will be more challenging than the last one and so on.  I will also be doing a demo to each lesson plan so the student can see my method from beginning to end, this will not be live it will be pre-recorded and I will send it to each student through email.  With each lesson I will help the student via email and offer critiques through the process and the finished painting.  Each lesson plan duration of time would 2 to 3 weeks long or if needed longer.   

This course is in its infant stage but I am extremely excited to be offering this opportunity to anyone who's interested.  Since this is a test trail I will be charging $50 for the first lesson plan including a demo to go along with it, one on one help and critique from beginning to end.  The price includes all lessons for the first painting.   Please email me or leave comments on my blog if your interested in this opportunity!

I started with the usual dry brush approach using no mediums just a bit of raw umber on the brush.  Then I start from the darkest values of the strawberry using ivory black, cadmium red, and cerulean blue.  At this point I'm just concentrating on the modeling the form from darks to middle value and also keeping the paints fairly thin.

Then I start to go into the lights still modeling the bigger forms, I used titanium white, cad. red light, and cerulean blue.  This section of the strawberry was extremely difficult to paint, the textures of a strawberry is so intricate in each area.  I thought this fruit would not have been so difficult but I was completely wrong and really challenged me in many levels.

Once I completed the strawberry I moved onto the leaves, I used ivory black, cerulean blue, yellow ochre pale, viridian, and cad. yellow.  When that was taken to a finish I started on the red glaze on the cheesecake, I first stated the local color in a thin application of paint.  I also model the lights on the form again just using thin paints so I can build on top of that layer and still have control.

After stating the local color I work on darker values and model them to the bigger form.  Then I added the lighter values doing the same making sure they are working with the form and also making sure the edges are making sense.

Then I start on the body of the cheesecake, again just stating the local color and modeling the big form.  I used raw umber, ultramarine blue, cad. yellow light, and titanium white.  After the big form was modeled I start adding the smaller forms or details and model them to work with the bigger form.

The bottom of the layer as you can see I approached in the same manner as stated above, I used raw umber, burnt sienna, ivory black, and titanium white.

Then I added the base using ivory black, cerulean blue, yellow ochre pale, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and titanium white.

Then I added the background color using cerulean blue, naples yellow, titanium white and a bit of cad. red.  As stated before this painting was just tougher than I expected and again I learned so much from it, you never know what to expect with each painting.  Thank you again for viewing my work and hope you enjoyed this one, bon appetite!