8 x 8, oil on panel

This may look like a black and white painting, but in fact I use no black paint at all. And the light areas are made up of many colors to make cool and warm whites. There really aren't any "pure" whites at all.

This closeup shows more of the color:

To make this painting I used a palette of no more and no less than:
- ultramarine blue
- raw umber
- cadmium yellow medium
- permanent violet medium
- titanium white

These are the colors I use to make most my paintings. Sometimes I also use cadmium red and cerulean blue, but not today.

I have been reading a painting instruction book by David A Leffel, who does beautifully dark and mysterious still lifes. I decided to try today to approximate some of his ideas in a 1-day sketch. I'm interested in how he paints edges, and I tried to focus on leaving some edges soft and making some hard, so the objects really seem to emerge out of the darkness.

I am excited by this experiment and am looking forward to trying a multi-day painting like this. It will be much easier to build up the full tonal range after some layers of the paint have dried; in these one-day paintings I am always working wet on wet.