Pomegranate and Raspberry Tea

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 21

Yesterday I got into a groove painting the swirly white and blue tablecloth, so I got straight onto another painting with the same cloth.
This is one of my personal favorites.
You can't go wrong with a cup of tea. Definitely firmly back in my comfort zone.

I'm two-thirds of the way through this January challenge!
It's been tough but very rewarding.
There was an update from Strada Easel yesterday that said there were still 500 people participating in the challenge. 

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Lemon Wedges on a Patterned Tablecloth

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 20

This painting was REALLY challenging.
I changed the lighting so that I had a strong light behind the bowl. I wanted to see how the light affected the lemon wedges, with some of them in shade, some of them in half shade and some of them in the light.
With this painting I really had to work all over the painting throughout.
When you get down to basics, representational painting is about isolating tiny areas of space and identifying and mixing the color that you see in that space.
The difficulty as we know is that our brains rarely just see an isolated space. The colour of the object we see in a space is also determined by what surrounds that space. (Think about the white gold / blue black dress as an extreme example.)
So to get the colors in the lemon wedges as I saw them here, I also had to paint the shade around the wedges at the same time.

The tablecloth is not the first tablecloth I've painted and I really enjoy doing them. I get much more impressionistic with tablecloths than with other things I paint, because if I tried to paint a realistic version, I'd be there for days. I varied the color very slightly and lightened the blue to towards the back to create the impression of distance. I really like it. The trick is to paint in all the shading first then paint the pattern on top. And actually it's a lot easier than it looks.

I was inspired to do the patterned table cloth after seeing this weeks Daily Paintworks challenge
The Patterned Challenge and thought I might as well continue the lemon theme from yesterday.

Also I left the lemons a bit looser because I really wanted to focus on the light in this scene.

Throughout the painting I took detailed notes about the colors I used for each part of the painting.


Torrit Grey
I have started using up my tubes of Torrit Grey.

Torrit grey is not a specific colour as such. It's made by Gamblin paints and they give away free tubes of it every year - and every year each batch they make is different. They make it out of all the leftover pigment collected when they clear out their air filtration system. It's a fantastic way of recycling.

I have a number of different tubes of it. I've been wondering what to use it for and discovered it's great for tinting yellow.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Tea for Martina

So I painted this one ages ago and I have been dying to post it, but it was a painting for a friend so I didn't feel I could post it until she had received it.
Martina is an Australian friend that I met since living in New York. Her daughter and my daughter met on the first day of school and became firm friends immediately! Martina and I got involved in our local town residents club social team and organised lots of activities together and our families became friends.
Unfortunately for us (not for them) the family recently decided to move back to Australia. We were all extremely sad to see them go, but since we are ex-pats ourselves, completely understood their reasoning.
Martina asked me to paint something for her and the objects are all from her kitchen. I fell in love with the adorable red enamel teapot and Martina loves to drink from a proper china teacup so this is my tribute to her.
She received the painting this morning all the way in Australia. It is now in their temporary rental house while they wait to move back into their permanent home.

The tablecloth was a challenge but wow I really enjoyed doing it. It wanted to make the pattern believable while keeping it fairly loose and not getting too hung up in the detail. Very happy with it and the painting overall.


(16 x 16 inches)
40 x 40cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

Ready, Steady, Bake.

If you already haven't encountered the TV baking phenomenon 'The Great British Bake Off' then you have almost missed it, since they have just announced that this will be the last official series, since the makers of the series are moving channels.
Since I'm a big fan of the series then I guess subconsciously this was my inspiration, although I didn't think of it at the time.  'Ready, Steady, Bake' seemed like an appropriate title though.
I kinda like the eggs reflected in the yellow and blue bowls, but I most proud of the metal fastener on the jar. It took me AGES but I really wanted to take my time with it and get it right.

This took about 6 hours to paint and quite a bit longer to come up with the initial composition. Square panels are not always an easy fit for a composition, so sometimes it takes a while to decide what works. I have decided to slow things right down and take my time over some compositions for larger panels. The little 6x6 inch panels are great for studies but I do prefer painting larger.

This one is 10 x 10 inches.
I'm working on more ideas for paintings this size.

(10 x 10 inches)
25.4 x 25.4 cm
Oil on Gessobord

This painting is now SOLD

UPDATE: This painting has been accepted for 'The Rye Arts Center' juried show and will be on display there between November 2nd - December 3rd 2016.

Here's a link:
The Rye Arts Center Small Works Exhibition