Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Sunny Side Up

Eggs in the sun!  This is the photo I took ⇧..... A fun project but challenging.  Thought we would paint these in the beginner class....not sure they like me!


We started painting one of the whole eggs, but first masked out the highlight on it.  Wet on dry, I used raw sienna + quinacridone rose and added winsor yellow to the sunlit side of the egg, adding a band of violet as I worked down the egg with ultramarine + quinacridone rose.  Using the same initial colors but just adding more rose, I painted the bottom of the egg.  After the egg dried I painted the harder line shadow on the the left side with a darker violet of ultramarine blue + winsor red.


I approached the other eggs in the same way and using the darker violet to get the deeper shadows.


Next I started painting the interior of the bowl.   I made a base color of the green bowl mixing Thalo Green (Daniel Smith) and Winsor Red.  To this base color I made a sunlit side by adding Winsor Yellow to it which I painted to the left of the eggs in the bowl.  At the same time I mixed the red clay color along the rim with Winsor Red + Thalo Green, and while the yellowish green color was still wet, I added the red to the rim.  I added a little Quinacridone Rose to middle area of the rim and then I continued with the rest of the rim to the right with the base color of the green.  When this dried, I painted the shadowed part of the interior of the bowl to the right of the eggs, covering the deep shadow part of the egg.  I used the base color green and I added Ultramarine Blue to the mix.  After painting it in, I dropped in some Raw Sienna close to the egg.  After this dried, I needed to make the egg show through the shadow.  To do this I used Gamboge (M.Graham) and painted it in where the egg is in shadow.  I saw that it needed some pink so I added some Quinacridone Rose.  I painted the dark to the left side of the eggs with the same color as the dark on the right side.

I then started to paint the base of the bowl.  I painted the light color on the whole base of the bowl with base color plus some thalo blue.  I painted a very light wash with this color.  When that dried I painted the shadowed side.  I used the same color with more thalo in it, plus adding some Quin. Rose at the bottom.  I then painted the reddish base with the same red and the rim and mingling the colors.


Now the big shadow!  It's a very large area so you have to work fast even though it is done wet on wet, if it's anything like today with 48% humidity, your paper will dry fast.  I used ultramarine blue + thalo blue + a little winsor red.  However, when you get closer to the eggs, you have to drop in some quinacridone rose and winsor yellow.  Near the single egg I just dropped in quinacridone rose.  Near the bowl I dropped in a little sap green but not too much.  If you are not happy with the shadow, you can do it over again, but you have to dry the paper completely with a hair dryer.  Then rewet it all and do the same thing again.  I did it twice to get a stronger color and it also smooths out some blotches.


Here is the finished painting, although it is a demo picture and a little sloppy, but I actually like all the wiggly edges!  I'm actually getting used to painting on an easel sideways!  The last thing to paint is the inside of the broken shells.  I used ultramarine + winsor red but on the bottom one I put some of the color that is in the shadow underneath it.    I added a shadow on the broken shell, and I added some shadow underneath on the table.  And it's done!