I finished the orange halves painting by deepening the background colours, warming up the orange by pushing the darker parts towards the red and adding some highlights and detail.
It is 28 x 20 cms on home-made board.
Palette used was:
Titanium white, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue.
Four Red Apples
I love painting red apples as it gives me chance to paint lots of red!
Lots of artists hold back on using red as its so bright but sometimes you just gotta have some fun.
This is just a small study- oil on home made canvas board 12 x 5 1/2 inches
I’m working on a new orange still life at the moment.
Again this is on home-made board and uses the following palette:
Titanium white, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue.
The first stage was to roughly paint the outline of the orange halves with yellow ochre and Sansodor.
I then made a mix of burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and alizarin for the background and added Sansodor and linseed oil to make it flow. To this I mix a little fast drying gel.
I then roughly approximate the tones and colour of the orange. At this point I have already established my lightest and darkest areas which give me a stable platform for the other tones or values in the painting.
After this layer has dried I go over it again and try to deepen the colours.
I add a small amount of my Sansodor/Linseed mix which makes this layer slightly glaze-like and enhances the colours underneath rather than paint over them completely.
It now needs a few finishing touches which can be applied once it dries.
Lemon Study
I have just finished this lemon study.
It’s 30 x 19.5cm on homemade canvas board and is a really great surface to paint on.
The palette I used here was titanium white, lemon yellow, cad yellow medium, burnt sienna, permanent rose, and ultramarine blue.
I will be selling it off cheaply (when it’s fully dry – probably next week) if any one fancies a bargain.
Instructions for purchasing are on the FAQ/How to buy page
I’ve got two still life’s in progress at the moment, one with red apples and one with lemons.
Each painting has had two passes so far, the first was just to establish positions on the canvas and get the canvas covered in thin paint.
After this layer had dried a bit I went over them again with a closer approximation of the colour’s and tones.
My wife made the supports using canvas sheet and board then sealed it with glue and acrylic primer and has made a really nice surface to paint on.
Loaf and knife still life
I eventually got round to finishing off the loaf painting.
I decided I didn’t need to do any more to the loaf itself, so I added the knife in the foreground, made the table recede into the background and added a blue glaze to the left hand side to show some cool light entering the picture.
The hardest part was painting the knife straight, I did this freehand after the previous layer had dried.
The palette used for this was: White, lemon yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue.
Some oil paintings can take months to dry but most of mine have thin layers with fast drying medium, so this one needs a couple of weeks to dry out before it can be sold.
Apples and Red Vase is my new oil painting, 40 x 30 cms on canvas board.
Apples and Red Vase
I tried adjusting my palette for this one just as an experiment, swapping permanent rose for alizarin crimson and transparent gold ochre for yellow ochre, but keeping ultramarine, lemon yellow and burnt sienna. I also added light green.
I normally don’t like mixing greens from yellow and blue as it never seems to be vibrant enough. So in this case I used lemon yellow and a tiny amount of the light green to get the main green for the apples (but also added gold ochre to tone it down)
I’m finding I am using my fingers and palette knife a lot more these days as the painting goes on, whereas a year ago it would be brushes throughout.
I thought it might be interesting to document my painting process.
This painting is not finished but I will post the final work in a week or so.
I have fallen into this way of painting over the years and find it works well for me.
I start off by diluting a suitable colour with sansodor or turps and painting in the basic shapes. I don’t do this with much accuracy. It’s a quick process just to establish positions on the canvas.
Next I block in the whole canvas with, again, thinned down paint, approximating the tones and colours. At this point I tend to leave it to dry a few hours.
When dry I add thicker paint but usually add a bit of medium to get it to flow. ( I use 60% Linseed oil and 40% Sansodor – my own recipe)
I mix my colours more carefully at this point and concentrate on getting the colour and tone I want.
Again I let this layer dry, this time overnight. I add liquin gel to my paint to get it to dry quickly.
This also gives me time to evaluate the painting and decide what needs to be added or changed etc.
I decided it needs some texture so I used a palette knife for the next step. This help to give the “crusty” feel to the bread and stop me from over blending the paint.
Its starting to take shape and the loaf is nearly finished but I also need to add a knife in the foreground.
I will add that last couple of stages in an up-coming post…
Lemon and Limes
Lemon and Limes still life oil painting by Steve Driver.
30 x 24 cm oil on canvas board
Converse Still Life
This still life is slightly different for me in terms of subject matter but the concept behind it is still the same – that is, I like to try and show the beauty in everyday objects or show how we can look at things in different ways.
I had the idea to do this painting a few months back but kept putting it off as I hadn’t done anything like it before, however after taking to plunge I am very happy with it!
It’s quite small 20 x 20 cm, oil on canvas board with a palette of titanium white, lemon yellow, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, yellow ochre and alizarin crimson.
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