"Pears Hugging"

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"Hugging Pears"

8 x 10 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

Happy Holidays everyone!  I've created the last painting of the pear series.  Painting these guys has been fun and challenging.  Their skin texture is pretty unique, it has smooth areas as well as rough spots.  It challenges you how to render with the paints with each area.  Pears also bruise easily and start getting spotty with time.  It definitely has a lot of translucent layers which make it more of a challenge to paint.  Overall its challenging but that's painting in general, if we don't push ourselves outside our comfort zone then it becomes harder to grow as an artist.  

I started with the usual drawing approach as I do with all my other paintings, no mediums just a bit of raw umber on the brush.  Once the drawing is established I laid in the background with cerulean blue, naples yellow, and titanium white.

Then I started on the first pear just laying all the colors in at once, this is to get a general feel where all the colors should be.  The palette I used was viridian deep, cobalt blue, cad. yellow, raw umber, ivory black, and titanium white.

After stating all the colors at once I then go back to the darker and middle values and take them to a finish.  I do the same with the lighter values and highlights when the darker values are done.  I'm going back and forth seeing what needs to shift when one area is completed.  

I repeat the same process with the second pear using a different pallet, I used cad. red light, cad. orange, raw umber, ivory black, cad. yellow, and titanium white.  

Once I've taken the lighter values to a finish with the pear, I start to add the cast shadows on the wooden base.  I'm also stating the middle to darker values at the same time, the palette I use is ivory black, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, and titanium white.  

Then I stated the darker values on the bottom side of the base by using ivory black, cad. orange, burnt sienna, and titanium white.  This is the finished photo of the painting, it was fun to continue and experiment with my technique.  As stated before it's interesting to see how the colors absorb with one another, the greens absorbs more of the reds rather than the reds absorbing the greens.  I was also seeing with this painting how quick I can finish it as I was racing against the light.  Its winter time and the light only stays up for so long.  Especially now when we have more grey days than sunny days because of the snow.  I don't mind it, it's a good challenge to see how much I can get done before a certain time.  Thanks agin for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this one and Happy Holidays!