After painting a few floral pieces that I want to put into the upcoming Gardenscape show, I decided that I wanted a change. I had some nice big raspberries and blackberries on hand, and a sunny afternoon, so decided to set up a still life. I like to do reflections so picked a couple of small pieces and used them. Yesterday afternoon was our art group, so I started to work on it.

This is on a linen panel (from Raymar). I put a thin wash of terra rosa over the canvas first. I like using the colour best so far. I have tried burnt sienna, ochre and a warm gray on various things, but seem to come back to this colour to tone the canvas. I have tried just the white of the canvas as well, but really prefer a warm under colour like this. It just seems to add a certain depth that I like.

Anyway, this is still pretty rough, as you can tell. I sketch the subject with vine charcoal, primarly just an outline of the shapes. Then I start to block in the colours as I see them within the shapes. I use a little walnut oil with alkyd and mix with the oil paint as I use it. This will help dry this first layer more quickly. Once I have the basic shapes in, I go back over refining with the pure oil paint.

It is often around this point though, that I will get up to take a break, walk away, and come back and suddenly see that the coloured blocks are turning into the subject I'm painting. It still gets to me. Such an amazing process. That's the magic!

I don't paint in heavy layers, doing more glazing, that is, thin layers of paint. This probably comes about because I began painting in watercolour, and it is the process I learned first. I find this particularly so for small pieces like this one. When I have done a couple of larger scale pieces, then it is bigger swaths and more paint which is fun. However, I think I have to wait until I can open the windows in spring as the paint, even though the new ones don't have nasty solvents in them, still has a bit of a smell that can bother me a bit and I don't want to become sensitizied. I don't use any organic solvents at all, just the walnut oil with the alkyd (straight alkyd is too smelly for me). I wash my brushes in Murphy's Oil Soap, even ones that have sat around for a few days (buy it at Safeway).

So tomorrow I'll continue on with this piece and see where it goes. Fun stuff!