"Leaf & Tangerine"

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"Leaf & Tangerine"

7 x 5 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

Hi everyone, well this is the third and final painting of the tangerine series.  I've been wanting to paint these tangerines with their leaves for a while and glad I was able to do so.  With this painting I tried something different from my usual approach to rendering.  I wanted to make the painting be more alive rather than seem to polished.  I really liked playing with the looseness of the paints, to capture the lights and sculpt them to a quality I haven't done so in a while was entertaining and challenging.  I'm not saying this painting is completely loose, but it has different characteristic than I usually go for with my technique.  As stated in my other posts I really like trying new approaches with my technique, this allows me to find new avenues I never thought of and ones I hope not to go back too.  As long as ones constantly pushing themselves to reach that next level, there will always be new discoveries along the way.

I started with the usual dry brush approach for the drawing stage, no mediums and just raw umber.  After the drawing was established I stated the darkest values on the leaves and stem.  I used ivory black, viridian and some cad. yellow.  I'm going quick at this stage to capture the gesture of the light, I don't want to get stiff with the paints and make the leaves look dead.  

I keep bouncing around and adding more middle values and some lighter ones as well, I used cad. yellow, cerulean blue, and titanium white.  

Then I start on the tangerine doing the same as I did with the leaves, I don't necessarily start with just the darks.  I  state all the notes at once and sculpt the chroma and value to their respected look.  For the tangerine I used cad. orange, cad. yellow, cad. red light, titanium white, raw umber, ivory black, and cerulean.

I keep refining the chroma and value and start narrowing down to the smaller shapes or details.  Its almost as doing big form modeling first and then going into the smaller forms, instead I am stating the whole information and going from there.  It does take a while to get used to because you're constantly jumping around everywhere making sure things are looking right.  It really depends on what type of painter you are, and the approach you're going for.

I then started on the base with the darker values and working to the middle and lighter values.  I used burnt sienna, cerulean, ivory black, naples yellow, cad. orange, titanium white.  In the final picture I went all around and kept refining certain areas, trying not to overwork the areas and make them look too polished or un natural.  As I said before it was challenging painting this way but I learned a lot and excited to apply it to the next alla prima I do.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this one and learned as much as I did!