Part Two: Project Two: Exercise 2b – Still life with man-made objects

When I saw the suggestion for using children’s toys for this exercise, I didn’t hesitate to start wading through the mass of choice on offer in my house.  Toy cars, dolls, teddies etc.; overwhelmed is not the word.  I was pretty sure I wanted to go down this route as I have never before painted anything like this, always natural scenes with more subdued colours, or portraits.  However, rather than settle on the more complex objects belonging to my two oldest children, I noticed that my baby son had some interesting ones of his own.

I chose a soft drum that contains smaller, squidgy shapes with a variety of colours and textures, effectively ticking the box for ‘look for interesting textures and forms that relate well to one another’.  Alongside this, I opted for two wooden pieces from a shape puzzle; a square ‘window’ and a rectangular ‘door’.   So, altogether the textures I had gathered were corduroy, mirror, wood, plastic, cotton, fleece, and a shiny fabric that I’m not quite sure of…not to mention the brown leather of the chair they were placed on.

Normally, I would undertake numerous preliminary studies for a painting, but somehow this time I just didn’t get very far with these.  The reason being, once I’d selected my objects, I haphazardly scattered them onto my leather sofa and – voilà – there was a ready-made composition that I was perfectly happy with.  I knelt down so that I was at eye level to draw (2B pencil on A4), and then once I’d determined the shapes and tones, I decided on a more cropped composition, almost square format, using my drawing to assist me.

I cut my A2 paper into a piece measuring approx. 37 x 42 cm, and began the painting by fleshing in the shapes, tones and shadows with a watered down Burnt Sienna acrylic paint.   I used a medium-sized flat brush for the entire process, using its wider edge for areas of tone and the tip of the bristles for the lines.  This was all very roughly and quickly executed, as I knew I would be painting over this with opaque colour.  One decision I did make rather last-minute was to bring the cube and half-moon shapes a little closer to one another than they are depicted in my sketchbook.

Now was the fun part – adding the gloriously bright colours.  I began with the primaries, mixing several yellows to make the yellow, and the same with the red and blue, so that I did not simply paint straight from the tube.  I added white to the mixtures so that they lost a little of their transparency, but found that I needed to eventually go over this with another layer of paint.  The secondary colours were mixed from the existing primary colour mixtures I had on my palette.

Next, I had to add the various black spots, stripes and squares on the squishy shapes.  My dilemma here was ‘do I use black to make them really stand out?’ or ‘do I mix my black from other colours?’.  I attempted the later, as I do try as much as possible not to use black in my paintings due to its deadening effect.  However, I don’t feel it would have looked too harsh next to the other colours here!  I persevered, and managed to use varying mixes of Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine and Crimson to achieve a deep, ‘mock’ black that I feel works rather well.  My Titanium White mix was tinted with a little purple (Crimson with Ultramarine), which took the edge of the brightness and also provided shadows on the white areas when darkened slightly.

Once I’d established the main areas of colour, other details were almost ‘scumbled’ in with a dry brush technique.  I didn’t want to get too carried away with the finer details and therefore found this worked rather well, so that I kept the slightly loose approach whilst suggesting various textures and keeping a balance between the objects.  The trickiest detail was the plastic film on the bottom of the toy drum, but I found that thinning the paint slightly and using more gestural marks that came from the wrist, as opposed to the whole arm, helped in depicting the curving lines of the reflections.

Strangely, it was only after I had completed the majority of the painting that I noticed the shapes created diagonal lines, in both directions.   The cube, half-moon and sphere create one line, and the green pyramid, sphere and square puzzle piece create another.  Maybe this is why I subconsciously decided this was the right composition!  In hindsight, I believe I could have used the bottom-left space more wisely, as it seems a little empty…although, it does create an interesting negative space.

Conclusion for Exercise 2

Looking back at the three paintings I have completed – drawing in paint, still life with flowers and still life with man-made objects – I can honestly say I am most pleased with this one.  There is a special connection to the toys as they represent my baby son, who I love dearly.  Not only that, I am pleased I took a risk with this one composition, with its extreme viewpoint, and its almost – as a fellow student put it – chaotic feel.  Fantastic!  This was just what I was aiming for, as though a child themself had carelessly thrown these toys down.  My one regret would be that certain shapes are a little lop-sided, such as the cube and the rectangular puzzle piece; I believe I just need to work on my rather shaky grip!

My Assignment 1 piece was a still life that featured a vase on a table.  To look at this now makes me feel that I did not opt for a pleasing viewpoint, with too much detail cluttering up the background.  I should have zoomed in on the main objects more, omitting certain aspects of the background and aim to create interesting negative space.  Since completing Project 2, I believe it has helped me to establish that I prefer to paint my objects from an interesting – almost extreme – viewpoint, and I will continue to explore other ways of bringing this into my work.

Part Two: Project Two: Exercise 2a: Still Life with Flowers

I admit from the very beginning that I cheated slightly with this one; the course book states “Set up a still life with flowers that can remain in place for a day or two”.  Having three very young children and not a lot of time to commit to painting at the best of times, kind of put paid to the idea of having fresh flowers in the house, and the prospect of forking out more money to replace them every time they died.  So…I settled for artificial flowers instead, placed in a glass vase containing water for authenticity!  I’m not even sure what kind of flowers they are, only that I felt they possessed pleasing shapes and colours that I felt would translate well next to my other chosen objects.  These were a teapot and a small bunch of red grapes.  Just as the coursebook said: simple.

I began – as I often do – by breaking the still life down into its separate components and studied them, this time in colour so as to identify possible schemes I may use in the paintings.   From the bunch of (artificial) flowers, I chose of of each of the different species – a large pink flower (unknown) and a white rose – and using coloured pencils deciphered the various colours I could see.  I found an array of colours in the white rose that were most pleasing, and rather surprising; yellow and purple especially, which was due to the difference in density on certain parts of the flower.  For ease of reference later on, I created a quick key of colours underneath each flower.

Next, I completed a study of the glass vase against the table, as it was casting unusual shadows and also showed interesting shapes due to the chunkiness of its base and the reflections of the water.  I wanted to be able to show the thickness of the glass successfully in the painting and therefore tried to envisage a collection of lines and areas of colour instead of an actual glass structure, to create a convincing image.   Again, I created a colour key to assist me later on if needed.  At this point, I had decided on the teapot and grapes as I felt their colours would harmonise with those of the flowers.  I did rapid pen sketches of them to familiarise myself with their shape and tone, as these objects, I felt, were a little trickier to depict due to their rounded uniformity, and therefore I wanted to be sure I could recreate this convincingly.

Once again, I was amazed at the colours I found in the red grapes, although I’m not sure I achieved quite the right depth of tone that I was after; too much purple, and not enough deep red.  I wanted to show the transparency of the grapes where the light hit, and this is where most of the red was found.  Even the humble teapot, with its plain white background, hid various colours, particularly blue and purple in its shadow.  Of course, these colours are not obvious when looking at everyday objects; they just seem to start emerging the more one looks at them.

Once I was happy that I had familiarised myself well with my chosen objects, I moved on to some quick pencil thumbnail sketches to ascertain suitable viewpoints and compositions.  I had decided already to once again use my trusty dining table to set up the still life; when we have a better organised space and less grabby little hands, I’ll begin to start setting up my still lifes in more interesting locations.  I was sure that I wanted to view my objects with light coming from the top-right; this was purely intuitive and just ‘felt right’.  I then needed to decide whether or not to zoom out and include every inch of the object, or move closer in and crop some of what I could see.  I settled on the latter, and a higher viewpoint seated on my drawing chair; this produced a more dramatic perspective and lent an almost grandiose and dominating quality to the flowers, which was quite fitting I felt as it was to be a still life ‘with flowers’.  The composition I opted for (no. 3) sees the line of the teapot continuing down through the grapes, which is then echoed in the slight curved edge of the table and the base of the vase.

I began by using a diluted Payne’s Grey to sketch in the outline of the objects with a round brush…

…before mixing this with varying amounts of white to establish tonal areas in the shadows, and also the teapot.  For some reason, I didn’t continue this process with the remainder of the painting, instead just getting stuck straight in with bold colour.

I completed the teapot first, switching to a medium flat brush, painting in the main colours before going back over with the ‘hidden’ colours in the shadows, and also the highlights.  Rather than too detailed a bunch of grapes, I opted to almost ‘scumble’ in the colour, which seemed to work effectively on the areas around the brightest highlights (the light purple and red).  I did not want the surface of the table to detract from the objects, therefore kept it simple with a wash of Yellow Ochre mixed with Burnt Sienna and Titanium White, with the grain suggested only by simple quick flicks of the wrist.  A dark area using a mix of Payne’s Grey and Burnt Umber was added to the negative space next to the tables edge, to keep it clean and unfussy, with a hint of Crimson to suggest reflected light and the thickness of the table.  The glass vase was painted using a small round brush, and as before with the colour pencil study, I concentrated purely on establishing areas of shape and colour so as not to overwork it.

Finally, I worked on the flowers, confident that I had finalised the rest of the painting and could concentrate on achieving the right balance of tone and colour in the flowers to sit comfortably with it.  I mixed up a dark red using Cadmium Red, Crimson and Burnt Umber and applied this to the darkest areas of all the flowers first, before then mixing the mid-tones with the same colours for the left-hand flower and also together with Ultramarine and Titanium White for the highlights and reflected light.  At this point I had realised the reflected light and shadows on the table were too ‘sickly sweet’ and needed toning down a little.

I completed the remaining flowers rather quickly, by identifying areas of colour and tone and laying them in thickly before going over with highlights and reflected light (the Ultramarine and Titanium White mix).  Each of the large pin flowers received a dash of bright green at their centres, which I decided to carry over into the stalk of the grapes to unify the composition somewhat.  The white rose – between the two pink flowers – was rather tricky to portray, and I found it difficult to translate the ethereal feel of my coloured pencil study to the painted version.  The colours seemed a little ‘muddied’ and seemed to blend into the pink flower, and after several attempts to brighten them it still didn’t satisfy me.  Therefore, I left it be so as not to risk spoiling it completely.  Th further unify the painting, I carried over some of the lighter pink from the flowers (a mix of Permanent Rose and Titanium White) to the the reflected light on the edge of the table, in the bottom right corner.  Lastly, I  picked out all of my existing highlights with a little more Titanium White.

The final painting took around four hours in total, working around an hour each night for four consecutive days;  I would have preferred a single sitting but alas, life got in the way.  I am most pleased with the striking viewpoint, and the richness achieved in the skin of the grapes and how it makes them appear three-dimensional.  However, for the flowers, it seems that as they are the biggest object of the piece, the painting is a little scruffier as it is harder to tighten up the details when working on this scale.  I would also try and get the shadows a little neater, as I had to rework these several times to achieve a satisfying depth of tone and colour.

Part Two: Project Two: Exercise 1: Drawing in Paint

 

Upon looking around my house for an arrangement that ‘just happened to be there’, I came across this group of objects on my kitchen window sill.  Granted, they are a little complex (something the course book advises you to avoid), but I was drawn to them somehow, their clean and fragile qualities.  The objects were; a curved, glass frame containing a picture of my toddler daughter, a clay heart (made by my daughter), a mug stand containing four mugs and a textured, turquoise glass vase.  The colour of the vase was in harmony with the pink and duck egg tones of the mugs, I felt, as well as the transparent greens of the edge of the glass frame.

I began by drawing, in ballpoint pen, the various objects, studying their shape, tone and texture.  As I was standing at the window and leaning at a peculiar angle of the sink somewhat, I managed to capture an interesting angle that made the objects appear smaller at the bottom.  I was careful to observe the faint shadows and reflected light in the shiny white tiles, as well as the very darkest tones which I achieved with multi-hatching.

As I wasnt able to complete the exercise in one sitting (or standing!), I came back to the objects the following morning and made studies of the vase with an artificial rose.  The rose was difficult to depict with its ‘lost’ edges (due to being white), but I was able to use hatching in an interesting way to reproduce the bumps in the vase and depict how the light passing through it behaved.

 

Finally, I made a few quick thumbnail sketches of possible compositions; I was certain I didn’t want to play around too much with the objects’ ‘natural’ state, so therefore moved only the vase a fraction and also adjusted my position in front of the objects slightly; I was obviously restricted with my options due to their positioning on the windowsill.

 

I settled on the composition that I felt had the most dramatic perspective and viewpoint; I liked the way the lines of the window frame and tiles ran almost perpendicular to the lines of the objects, especially the metal frame of the mug holder  I also stood by my decision to keep the vase slightly more in the foreground, rather than exactly between the mug holder and the edge of the paper, as I felt the latter would be a little predictable.  I began by using a dilute Blue Lake and Ultramarine mix (acrylics) and fleshed in the skeletons of the objects (A3).

 

Once the outlines were in place, I began by placing the mid-tones first, such as the grey on the tiles and window frames, and then worked in the darker tones.  I used predominantly Paynes Grey on the tiles and the evening darkness viewed through the window, with varying mixes of Crimson, Pthalo Green and Titanium White to produce the remainder of the colours throughout.  Once the main colours were in place, I added in highlights with pure white to give the objects the realistic shiny quality that they possess.  I was careful not to completely obliterate my pre-painted lines with opaque paint as I went along, letting the blue of the preliminary sketch shine through in places.

 

 

 

Part Two: Project Two: Research Point – Dutch Still Life

The Dutch are highly regarded for their contribution to the still life genre, and there were many masters of the form who chose themes such as ontbijt (breakfast piece), vanitas (reference to mortality) and floral.  A sense of symbolism was readily and purposefully employed in these paintings, whether it be a skull of some sort to suggest the shortness of life on Earth, or a book to hint a the achievements of man.  The works of the artists of the 17^th century all appear to be executed in a similar manner, with a high level of technical mastery, however a closer look is needed to ascertain their individuality and preference for certain themes, colours etc.

Willem Claeszoon Heda (c1594-1680)

Willem Claeszoon Heda: Still Life with Pewter and Silver Vessels and a Crab, oil, c1633-7

 Heda was one of the most famous still life artists of his time, with around 70 works to his name.  He had begun his career painting figures exclusively, but then later moved on to still life.  He seemed to favour a greyish-green overall tone in his paintings, and the piece I admire most from his works is Still Life: Pewter and Silver Vessels and a Crab.

There is an attention to detail and also colour here that brings the whole piece to life and renders the objects bright and alive with a luscious sheen.  His portrayal of reflected surfaces is masterful, with a high proficiency of painting silver and tin materials also.  The orangey-red of the crabs’ shell is hinted at in the reflections on the pewter items, and is complementary to the overall green-tinged background.

The symbolism here, to me, is quite stark; the crab, on its back and quite clearly dead, stands for death, and the lemon tells of a sweet life that can leave a bitter taste in the mouth.  There is also an upturned vessel, which can allude to short-lived earthly pleasures.  Therefore, this painting is demonstrative of the vanitas theme.  The composition is well thought through, with the objects tapering down to a point at the at the bottom right corner of the table, creating a triangular arrangement the leads the eye from the pewter jug and down and out through the knife handle.

Harmen Steenwyck (1612-1656)

Harmen Steenwyck: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life, oil on oak panel, 1640

Steenwyck clearly hasn’t held back with his use of symbols in Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life.  All are brought together to serve a specific purpose; a religious piece masquerading as a still life.  The message here is that one should not put too much emphasis on acquiring material possessions and wealth.  Each of the objects featured possesses its own deeper meaning.

• The Skull – this object is what immediately catches the viewer’s eye, due to its distinct features that capture the sunlight from the upper left.  This is known universally as the symbol of death.
• Chronometer and oil lamp – less noticeable objects that are placed close enough to the skull to be linked to it.  This stands for the length and passing of life.
• The Shell – these traditionally stand for birth and fertility.
• Books and musical instruments – Seen as indulgences and luxuries in human life; books stand for knowledge, and instruments suggest the pleasure of the senses.
• Silk and sword – the silk stands for luxury, and the sword represents both power and craftsmanship.  These weapons were considered both dangerous and beautiful. 
• The Stoneware Jar – water or oil – both life sustaining – were probably contained within such a vessel.  The bust of a Roman emperor is actually visible beneath the jar, due to the thinning of the paint over the years.  The artist most probably wanted a much simpler object that would not detract from the other objects, such as the skull.

What strikes me the most about this painting is its composition; the objects descend steeply from the top-right to bottom-left, creating a triangular arrangement with the tabletop.  This seems to be a very popular compositional style with other Dutch still life painters of the time, such as Heda (seen above).  This gives a dramatic perspective to the piece, where the eye starts from top-right and makes its way down through the objects that symbolise death, finally – and rather fittingly – settling on the shell, which represents birth.

Steenwyck’s painting technique is one that would have required patience and meticulous attention.   He would have used a smooth wooden ground and built up layers of glazes to achieve textural effects such as the iridescent shell and smooth skull.  The colour palette of the main objects is muted, almost as if to unify them, however strong areas of pink and blue cloth serve to break up the monotony of grey and beige.

Other Dutch Still Life

I admit that when it came to researching further still life artists, I was somewhat daunted by the sheer amount of information and how I would distill this all down and infuse it with my thoughts and feelings.  However, I found that the BBC4 documentary Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting was invaluable in helping me to understand the origins and implications of still life painting across the centuries.

What surprised me somewhat was the extraordinary Basket of Fruit produced by Caravaggio in the late 16^th century; I’d associated him with dark, atmospheric masterpieces, so to discover that such a painting was to his name was rather a shock.  Apparently he was interested in death and decaying, which would explain the less than ideal state of some of the fruits and leaves, especially the worm-holed apple.   Although I understand this has nothing to do with Dutch still life, this in a way marked the beginning of still life painting, and also has a somewhat vanitas feel to it considering it shows previously luscious fruit disintegrating and dying.

Caravaggio: Basket of Fruit, oil on canvas, c1599

When flower painting was addressed, I found it interesting that the species depicted together were usually not grown in the same season, or indeed the same country.  This showed how the Dutch merchants had progressed as they had access to exotic flowers from around the world.  Certain species, such as tulips, were more in demand than others, and the floral pieces were seen as uplifting as their beautiful colours could be viewed at any time of the year.

What I found endearing was the bunch of closely-observed asparagus by Adriaen Coorte (ca. 1665 – after 1707), a Dutch Golden Age painter who produced relatively small paintings.  Still Life with Asparagus is unassuming as well as ethereal and light; Coorte has remained loyal to his subject whilst giving it an air of mystery and ghost-like quality; again, perhaps a nod to the certainty of death.

Adriaen Coorte: Still Life with Asparagus, oil on paper, 1697

I aim to keep this programme recorded and stored on my television for regular viewing as I found it both informative and inspiring, offering a modern and refreshing look at this diverse genre of painting.

Resources:

BBC4, Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting, aired Sunday 5th January 2014

www.metmuseum.org (Metropolitan Museum of Art)