Mandarins in a Blue Bowl

Today I'm posting the finished product of a 3-day painting. Read up from the bottom of December 11 to see the painting evolve. You can also watch an animation of the painting.

9 x 12 inches, oil on 1" deep wood panel

For the final few hours of the painting I tinkered with the fruit. I ended up peeling another mandarin for the curl of peel; the one I was using before completely withered over the last couple days. The fruit in the bowl now have solid round forms, and all the colors are deep and saturated.

I also made some final refinements to the peeled fruit in the foreground. I added some contrasting light and darks, and I emphasize the orange glow of light shining through the single slice in front.

Phase 7

In this phase I concentrated on the background and the butcher block surface. I glazed the whole backdrop darker; the pattern detail I'd thought about including seemed distracting. I also decided the cutting board was too warm, so I completely repainted it in cooler colors and added more detail of the wood grain and knots. I think the cool color better captures the feeling of the winter light, and makes the orange fruit really pop. I also refined the bowl in this phase, adjusting the reflections and subtleties, and deepening the shadow, giving it a blue cast on the edges. I decided to remove the piece of rind to the right of the bowl as it was cluttering the composition.

Mandarins in a Blue Bowl - SESSION 2

Today is a continuation of the painting I began yesterday. It's not yet for sale, I'll probably finish tomorrow and post it on eBay tomorrow evening. Read up from the bottom of yesterday's post to see the painting evolve:

Phase 6

Here you can see I've been brightening up the colors of the fruit in the bowl. The challenging part of this is making the light side of the fruit distinct from the dark side, without making a sharp corner nor a muddy mess where they meet.

I worked on the blue bowl so it looks more like transparent glass and not like an opaque ceramic bowl. I also made it more symmetrical and fixed the ellipse of the edge so it is more accurate and convincing.

A few problems to work on tomorrow: The fruit in the foreground is more detailed now and looks very different from the style of the rest of the painting. Also, the actual orange peel is starting to dry out and the shape is changing. I soaked in it water for a while today to plump it back up, I hope I can get away with doing that another day. I also need to deepen the shadow cast on the ground by the bowl, it's actually quite dark in real life.

Phase 5

I worked for a while adjusting the size and shape of the fruit in the foreground, adding detail to the background, and suggesting the wood grain of the cutting board surface. At this point I realized that the colors were getting muddy - every new brushstroke mixes with the paint underneath so you don't get clean fresh colors if you push the paint around too much. You can see it's especially a problem on the dark side of the fruit in the bowl.

Mandarins in a Blue Bowl - SESSION 1

Today I am starting a slightly longer painting, I plan to work on it for a few days and describe my process and thinking along the way. At 9 x 12 inches it's a little larger than my recent daily paintings, and the finished piece will be a bit more detailed than the dailies. When the painting is complete I'll post it for sale on eBay, in the meantime I'll just be posting the in-progress photos here.

The painting is a picture of several mandarins in a blue glass bowl, with peeled and sectioned fruit scattered in the foreground. To see the painting process in order read from the bottom up:

Phase 4

In this phase I start to correct my mistakes - you can see I've adjusted the size of fruit in the bowl, and made the bowl itself wider and more shallow, for example.

When the major design problems are solved I start adding more colors and refining the details. I use smaller brushes, and start to make some edges defined and more precise. I make sure the darkest darks and the lightest lights are represented, as well as clean, accurate swatches of the major colors. If I'm not careful the painting will get "muddy" as it progresses, so early on I try to establish the full range of values and accurate colors.

As I paint I'm always thinking about what I will do next, there are always problems I am not sure how I will solve. For example, the hanging cloth background has an embroidered pattern and I don't know yet how much detail and contrast to include. I'm also wondering how to show that the peel to the right of the bowl is partly obscured by the shadow. Also, I noticed that the blue bowl is not truly symmetrical and the ellipse of the rim is inaccurate. So I have my work cut out for me. Check back tomorrow and see how I do!

Phase 3

This looks a lot more developed than the first step, but really I am just filling in some of the lighter tones and basic colors. Since I made most my drawing and composition decisions in the Raw Umber phase of the painting, this step is usually fast and satisfying. At this point I stop painting and spend time just looking back and forth between the painting and the still-life set up in front of me. I usually find I have made some errors I need to fix.

Phase 2

For the first step of the oil painting I use just one color, Raw Umber, to sketch out the composition with loose, rough brushstrokes. As the painting progresses I usually realize I made some mistakes at this stage, so I try to keep the edges soft and blurry so it's easy to adjust any errors of proportion.

Phase 1

I start by preparing my wood panel with white artists' primer paint called "gesso". When the gesso is dry I paint a layer of acrylic paint in Burnt Umber to tone the panel. When the acrylic layer is dry I am ready to start oil painting. I usually prepare 5-10 panels this way at a time so when I am ready to start a painting I have several sizes on hand to chose from.

The reason I start with a colored background is because the initial colors and values I put down are more accurate than they would be on a stark white background.

I prefer wood artists' panels to canvas because the support is firm (there is no "give"), and the paint slides around easily on the smooth surface compared to the textured surface of a canvas.

Mandarin Orange SOLD

5 x 7 inches, oil on panel

I was inspired to paint this because of how the light glows through the translucent orange slice.

I am all zenned-out after spending most the day working on this little painting. By contrast, when working outdoors I feel anxious and distracted: I have to work quickly to catch the ever-changing light; there's noise and activity all around; I'm usually uncomfortable and cold; and often I have passers-by peeking over my shoulder (which is actually kind of flattering and they are always nice, but I get performance anxiety!). I've also usually spent at least an hour lugging my paint box around looking for the perfect scene with a suitable spot to perch and paint it, stressing as the light fades moment by moment. It hardly seems worth it!

So I'm not sure I'm cut our for plein air (onsite/outdoor) painting, but I would like to practice more landscapes and cityscapes. It was drilled into me in art school to avoid working from photographs, but there is a very successful and highly talented Daily Painter who almost always works from photos. Her name is Karen Jurick and somehow she manages to make beautiful paintings from her own photos.

Pond Reflection

6 x 8 inches, oil on panel

Back at the Japanese Tea Garden: Yellow Ginkgo leaves float across the upside-down reflection of the surrounding trees. I love the diagonal sweep of light across the surface, the vertical points of reflected pine tree tops, and the sprinkle of floating leaves.

Autumn Trees

6 x 8 inches, oil on panel

I went back to the Japanese Tea Garden again today. I'm trying to take advantage this last spell of sunny, warm-ish days by painting outside as much as possible. I got very cold after sitting on a rock and painting all afternoon, but I took advantage of being in a tea garden and warmed up with a pot of jasmine.

Floating Leaves

5 x 7 inches, oil on panel

Today I spent the afternoon in Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden. I took 153 photos and was dazzled by how the design of the garden makes a beautiful composition appear from just about any angle.

I was too visually overwhelmed to choose a single view to paint, and after a while I just sat down in one spot and started noticing the small details of the fallen ginkgo leaves and Japanese maple leaves drifting by on the surface of a pond. I loved how the leaves looked as they floated on the surface and almost - but not quite - merged with the reflection of the trees and sky.

I spent a long time trying to figure out how we see that the floating debris is on a different plane than the reflection. I noticed that each leaf makes a dimple in the surface tension of the water, which creates a wobbly outline and makes the leaf "pop" visually. I tried to imitate this in my little Monet-inspired sketch.

Seashell and Bottle SOLD

5 x 7 inches, oil on panel

This is the same seashell I did in a more impressionistic style earlier this week. I decided to tackle it more directly this time and really attempt to capture the pearly reflective surface of the shell. Light and shadow define form, but when every surface on an object reflects light, I discovered that the form is very hard to describe. I enjoyed the challenge, though.

San Francisco Ferry Building

6 x 8 inches, oil on panel

Today Nowell and I went to the Embarcadero waterfront area downtown here in San Francisco. Nowell experimented with his new HD video camera while I did this painting of the Ferry Building. It was very cold and as the sun sank lower the wind picked up, so by the time we packed up our equipment we were shrieking with the cold and forcing our numb fingers to work faster.

We dropped everything off in the car (where I balanced the wet painting on the dashboard) and managed to recover from the cold at the bar of the nearby Slanted Door restaurant with a snack of sherry and oysters.

Overall, a pretty satisfying day.

Cafe Centro SOLD

6 x 8 inches, oil on panel

Seashell

6 x 6 inches, oil on panel

Alley in Tuscany SOLD

6 x 8 inches, oil on panel

It's nice to be painting again after a few days off! From now on I'll be doing a painting a day on weekdays.

This is one of the dozens of picturesque alleyways we admired while travelling in Italy earlier this year.

Day 30 - Pears in Wax Paper SOLD

10 x 10 inches, oil on panel

My 30th painting is done! I really enjoyed painting this today. I like how the tight cropping and the loose brushstrokes make the image almost abstract.

I had fun with this one, I kept it very loose, soft, and vague, and let the image slowly come into focus. Here are the in-progress shots:

Day 29 - Mermaid SOLD

5 x 7 inches, oil on panel

I bought this little ceramic figurine on eBay a couple years ago.

(eBay link will not work until 6:30 pm PST)

Day 28 - Croissant

10 x 10, oil on panel

Our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Triptych, serves fantastic croissants at their weekend brunch. I bought two today: one to eat, and one to paint. It tastes as good as it looks. I think maybe this should be titled: called "Having my Croissant and Eating it, Too"

Day 27 - Glass Jar SOLD

8 x 8 inches, oil on panel

Day 26 - Apple in Wax Paper SOLD

8 x 8 inches, oil on panel

Here are the in-progress shots:

Day 25 - Nude in Sheer SOLD

9 x 12 inches, oil on panel

Here you can see the brushstrokes:

Day 24 - Figs on Black SOLD

6 x 6, oil on panel

Several people have mentioned they like to see the in-progress steps, so here they are:

Day 23 - Antique Bottle SOLD

5 x 7 inches, oil on panel

This little medicine bottle has raised letters on it, making it a pretty daunting little object to paint. Today I finally felt brave enough to tackle it.

My "soft edge" experiment is really helping me; until recently I felt I had to paint a sharp edge where I saw one. The softer feel more accurately describes the light I think.

Ok, gotta run, I have a lunch date with my husband - to VOTE!