"Grapes & Wine Glass"

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"Grapes & Wine Glass"

7 x 5 in 

Oil on Canvas Panel

Thanksgiving was so well needed the amount of food I ate was just ridiculous but I look forward to it.  Relaxing and being with family is always a nice thing to do, I wasn't able to work on any paintings but did have the chance to finish up some drawings.  I was itching to get back to painting after lounging around and not really doing anything, its nice to relax but to much of it can throw me out of sync. 

 I truly do love painting grapes from their texture to the colors that are deep within their skin, I can't find a bad thing about them.  What I also like about them is that their stem always has a gestural feel to it, its in charge of holding together all these little guys and maintaining a balance with their weight.  As mentioned before their texture is really beautiful to paint, their skin is able to absorb light and retain it with a glowing effect.  Light skims across their form and ever so lightly wraps around it, it's really neat to see the difference between each of them.  I wanted to continue the play with composition that I've been doing lately and introduce a wine glass to the picture, I felt it was fitting to incorporate it with the grapes and also have an opportunity to paint a shiny surface.  As beautiful as they were to paint they were even more delicious to eat afterwards, nothing beats painting one of these and eating them as a reward for being done.

I have exciting news I've been recently picked up by Art Resource Gallery in Edina, Minnesota.  I started showing their last weekend, I'll only be showing larger still life paintings and ball point pen drawings.  If anybody is in the neighborhood you should stop by and check out the artwork.  I also have two new classes at Bloomington Art Center that are being offered for the winter session.  If anyone is interested you can sign up by clicking here for the figure drawing class and here for the oil painting class.   

I started with the usual dry brush approach using no mediums and a bit of raw umber on the brush.  Once the drawing was complete I filled the background in with titanium white, ultramarine blue and cad.red light.  After the background was complete I stated the grapes and their big form modeling, I'm not really concerned with the details at this point just on how the light falls on the form and how dark the darks need to be.  The colors I used for this stage were naphthol red, cad.red light, cad.yellow light, cad. orange and ultramarine blue.   

Once the big form modeling was stated I then start to concentrate on the small form modeling stage, I break this stage down to two sections first stating the darker values with their specific forms.  Once that's complete I start on the second section which is stating the lighter values with their specific forms and highlights.  The reason I like to break this stage down to two sections and start with the darker values first, it lets me see how dark I need to really go and sets up the lighter values for the finish.  It keeps the process controlled it's really easy to just work all around and not really get to a finish, doing it in this manner really allows me to get a quicker finish in a methodical way.

Once the grapes and stem are taken to a close finish I then start on the wine glass by stating the middle to darker values first.  Once thats complete I then state the lighter values and their highlights.  Once I'm finished with the wine glass I can then go back to the grapes and add any finishing touches.  That's the reason I stated that I take the grapes and stem to a close finish because once all the elements are painted you get a better picture on how everything works together, you'r bound to change or add something towards the end.  

Thanks for stopping by and viewing everyone, hope you enjoyed this one!