Spring hasn’t come yet but I’m painting lots of still life – Philadelphia Fine Art K. Hu

Here is my latest still life, a full painting (not a sketch or study like my other ones have been lately.)  Don’t you want to eat that eggplant I bought 4 weeks ago when I started on this painting and the other side of it now looks like a pockled wrinkly mess?  Thank goodness one side stayed relatively ok during this duration!

This is my block in for the painting.  The block in took a while, but honestly probably not more than two hours from sketch to here.  All the time went in to then trying to get the same colour for that eggplant, which I still think I failed to do but the way it came out is slightly more accurate anyways.  I think the eggplant is my focal point (right?  Right?)  I even had to knock down the intensity of the orange at the end so it wouldn’t get distracting.  I bet you would never guess it would come out like this from the block in 😀

Once more for posterity.

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A new approach to painting – Still Life by K. Hu art Philadelphia

Hello folks!  Spring is just around the corner (and by ‘around the corner’ I mean around the corner, down a few blocks, turn left, another two blocks, make a right, walk another mile or so… – it snowed yesterday.)  In honor of Spring I am trying a fresh approach to painting still life.  Really all I’ve been painting are still lifes so basically it’s a new approach to painting.

Here we have the block in:  Same as usual, but this time there is a twist!

Instead of waiting for the block in to dry so it doesn’t smear, I just go in with all the base shadows and lights.  Boom.  Fill up the whole canvas.  No waiting.  Just do it.  Takes a lot of paint at once.  Cheapskate in me cries for paint loss.

No, really, see?  It’s all blocked in, just large important forms.  Wow it looks like a coloring book.  But like without lines.  Try not to leave too many lines.

  

Honestly it’s that simple.  I took the time to go to each object and give it it’s preferred amount of detail.  I know the cup being in the back looks a bit surprising but the cup really really took over the painting when it was in the front and ruined my peaceful analagous vibe.

Here is detail of some line I am working with.

This quick painting took about 4 hours (more or less.) and was just a fun study with chrome.  The lime looked delicious but afterward it looked dry and brittle.  Ew.  So this is what I’ve been doing lately.  Getting ready to post a little more and make Spring the time to whip into shape 😀  There are a couple updates on khufineart.com since I last posted about it in case you are bored!