Today in class, we started an oil painting. Professor Margie setup a prop for us to paint. We had to paint two limes, two oranges and a lemon, lifesized depending on the size of our canvas. I started using the technique thick over thin. Spreading gesso over the top of my canvas giving me a easy background. Secondly, I used the view finders to figuare out where the objects of my painting will be placed.
While painting the fruit, I also painted the shadows where they appeared. The best way to arrange the objects in the painting is to have some of the fruit and their shadows go off the canvas. This painting started difficult because I had to enlarge each peice of fruit to fill up the canvas.
The shadows were a little easier because I took the edge of the paint brush and glided it up the canvas with the combination of blue and orange paint giving the fruit's shadows a realistic appearance.
I continued painting light to dark and thin to thick. The shadows that bounced off the fruit seemed to be too dark after the first day. I decided to tone down the color by using the lighter blue and some orange. There were differences in between the two oranges, the one in front had to be darker. I used the dark yellow and mixed some orange in it to give the orange a darker shade. The lemon was a little bit more difficult, because the left side had a darker edge that was casted off from the surrounding fruit. I know that purple is opposite of yellow on the color wheel, I took a small amount of purple to cast a little shadow on the left side of the lemon.
When I started giving more tone in the color of the limes, I saw that there was a yellow reflection on one of them. By mixing alittle bit of yellow and green gave the lime a brighter center. The fun began, when I needed to show a shimmer of a highlight on the center orange. Using a little white and orange paint, I slanted my paint brush, and ever so slightly, brushed small strokes. Between each stroke I would wipe my paint brush in case I picked up any paint from underneath the white.
The final stage of this painting is touching up. I first started with the limes. I gave them a rounder shape. The oranges were my main issues because I saw they needed three different shades of orange on them. The left side had to be more firmer looking and darker. The second shade of orange I mixed with a small amount of yellow to give the orange a brighter center. Another touch up that I focused on was the shadows directly underneath the fruit. The painting came to a conclusion when I painted the bottom half of the background. I mix white, yellow, and a tad bit of orange to give the table the fruit was laying on a off white look.
