So I decided to try some reflections, and since I like coffee, a coffee cup seemed to be appropriate.
Overview
I also went through the massive amount of paint that I had today and decided to try out some other paints. So I changed up my palette almost completely for this painting. Some things worked very well.
I had a cool Permanent Rose color that almost matched the lighter side of the coffee cup perfectly. The paints were from all different manufactures I will have to list here each one and exactly what I thought about it. I’m still working toward solidifying my palette of paints especially the manufacturer so this exercise was very helpful.
Palette tryout list of paints and rating (from right to left on palette pic)
- Winton: Titanium White – My normal white, but because wintons are so tough/thick that I thin them down previously with Winsor & Newton liquin.
- Rembrandt: Cadmium Yellow Deep – I knew Rembrandt paints were thinner but I wasn’t prepared for how wet this paint was. So much so that I don’t think I liked it. The color seemed a bit too thin.
- Winsor & Newton: Cadmium Yellow Pale – Nice paint, thinner than wintons but not near as thin as Rembrandt and the color here is strong.
- Old-Holland: Yellow Ochre Deep – One of the most expensive paints you can buy and man these things are thick, its like trying to blend a rock. Strong color though, yet subdued.
- Winsor & Newton: Terra Rosa – Again, nice thickness and strong color.
- Winton: Permanent Rose – This tube was very old, years ago I thinned this paint down with linseed oil. Nice cool red, the color wasn’t that strong, but the thickness was great.
- Old-Holland: Scheveningen Orange – Strong color, super thick.
- Gamblin: Alizarin Permanent – Loved this color, loved the thickness.
- Rembrandt: Ultramarine Deep – Nice color, but a bit thin.
- Winton: Ivory Black – Straight out of the tube. This wasn’t as thick as normal wintons, the color was very strong. I will say that it was nice to have an easy gray on my palette although it couldn’t get near as dark as a Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue combination.
My hierarchy of painting importance
- Drawing
- Value
- Edges
- Composition
- Color
Drawing
How can I improve the drawing
I did something a bit different this time and it seemed to work really well and it got me around my boredom of drawing focus. I quickly sketched the entire still life then blotted out that drawing and redrew the still life over top.
The second drawing I measured exactly and somehow it was much more refreshing to draw over an approximated drawing then a blank canvas. This led me to blot out the whole painting at the end. I figured if it was that much fun to do a drawing over an approximated one, I wonder how much fun it will be if I paint over an approximated painting. You can see the blotted out painting below.
Value
How can I improve the values?
A few values were off, I’m ok with this. I’m going to study the issues and fix them tomorrow.
Other Thoughts
I will try and explain. The dark blue arrow is the initial increment. All other measurements start with the setup of this increment. I also setup a plumb line next to this initial measurement.
All the blue arrows are my measurements used in trying to achieve certain locations on the still life. These specific locations are indicated by the green lines. For example, the two light blue arrows in the center of the cup and below the initial increment dark blue arrow are indicators of me trying to figure out how many increments is it to the bottom of the cup away from my initial.
As you can see this measurement is about 2 increments and a little tiny bit left. Well, that “little tiny bit” is the inaccuracy that I have to guess on. These inaccuracies are all throughout my process and are indicated by red boxes. Now the purple line is the tracing of the painting lined up as best I could with the photo. Here you will notice that the inaccuracies with the paintings drawing coincide very closely with the red box indicated inaccuracies or guesses that I needed to make.
So, one can conclude from the diagram that when an increment doesn’t match up exactly with an edge that is trying to be achieved then that will result in a guess, and depending on the size of the space past the edge or before the edge that the increment hits will determine how inaccurate my guess will be. So far in the picture the smaller the miss the more inaccurate my guess will be. But, if the miss is close to an easily recognizable division, such as half of the increment, than my guess will be more accurate. Suffice to say, this is very interesting.