I have designated Mondays for still life work. Today I did a tea pot and fruit still life with a focus on brush work. I wasn’t caring too much about detail I just wanted to get a good representation of the still life with simple brush strokes.
One of the hardest things I find is being able to look at a subject and deconstruct it in my head before I put it on canvas. Maybe “deconstruct” is not the correct word, but I find it hard to simplify my subject matter yet keep it accurate.
I remember Richard Schmid writing about simplification of subjects and learning when to do so. He said you can simplify most subjects but if you tried to simplify a zebra from black and whites stripes into a gray it wouldn’t work. I can think of many instances where simplification, or the over simplification of subjects wouldn’t work at all.
I think I did well on simplifying this still life enough, yet keeping it accurate. The design on the tea pot was a bit of a challenge though.
