Thursday, March 22, 2012

Glass Reflections - A Work in Progress

Margaret brought in today's still life at KAGS. She certainly set out to create two very challenging displays.

I chose the first one with a lemon and lime together with a couple of bottles, a water pitcher and a half filled tumbler. All of the elements were placed on a mirror, which reflected back their images and the blue back cloth backdrop.

Once I had blocked in my sketch I started painting the lime first followed by the lemon and their reflections.

I noticed that the reflected back drop was a lot darker in colour than it appeared with the light shining on it and painted the section between the lemon and line to see how strong contrast it would be.

Using a wash of raw sienna I put in some of the reflected colour from the table on the left side of the clear bottle, into the glass tumbler where the liquid was and into the area the light touched on the bottle at the far right of the painting.

Using a mixture of French ultramarine blue, Antwerp blue and burnt sienna I painted in the lip on the water pitcher and a little bit of detail on the handle.

With a pale was of Antwerp blue I indicated some of the areas on the first bottle where the back drop showed through the glass.

A lot of work has to be done in order to finish this painting and I will post it again once more of it has been completed.