Steps, Stages and Phases

I had hoped/planned to include the finished painting in this post... but it's still not quite done. It's been in progress since early December!

But that's OK because settling on "good enough" isn't really good enough!

In spite of the bright (and tarnished) brass pot and the richly colored grapes, when I set up this still life what intrigued me was the subtle variations of neutrals in the cloth and wood colors. But the subtlety is escaping me and that's why the painting isn't quite done yet.

The still life set up is on the left. After working up a small color study, the drawing was transferred to canvas. Since the grapes weren't going to last  they were painted first.

 

The stage at the left below is still mainly about the grapes. Adding some of the surrounding color helped to determine the overall value (light vs dark) of the painting and the grapes relative to everything else.

On the right I worked on the top of the brass pot, finessing the ellipse a bit.

These photos show a color shift in the brass pot and fiddling with the drippy tarnish pattern in the highlight area. It's kind of an interesting detail but was too prominent and taking away from the shape of the pot.

Below is the latest rendition. I'm not calling it final yet because the fabric needs to be refined a bit. It's almost there but since it's taking so #$%* long to finish, I'm posting these progress shots for now. 

Wish me luck! ;)

©2015 Dorothy Lorenze

Thanks for joining me on my painting journey. Please feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested in oil painting.

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