inspiration
Part of well-being is eating healthy foods. I googled “vegetables, fruits and grains” and viewed the results. I like this photo of vegetables because it’s not too complicated, but offers interesting textures and colors.
photo by: Liz West
Working from my pencil sketch, I started painting the vegetables from the left-hand side and that’s still my favorite part of the painting. I decided to paint the background purple instead of black because of the paints available to me. Unfortunately, this means the eggplant doesn’t show up very well. Looking back, I wish I had painted some darker purple behind that part of the foreground.
I enjoyed spending time looking at the photograph and figuring out how to use the paint to represent three dimensions. I was most successful with the potato in the front of the basket. It was a challenge to paint reflections on the red and green peppers. I’m afraid they don’t really “read” as peppers. I quite enjoy the colors and textures of asparagus but they were challenging to paint at this small size.
I painted the basket last and really like the way it turned out.
I decided not to add ink to this one. I wanted to let the paint speak for itself.
I had a good time painting.
Now that it’s done, I understand that I didn’t paint what I saw. I turned the view on edge instead of seeing the basket from slightly above.
At the same time as I was painting, I also played with digital art, “painting” on the photograph. This feels like cheating to me. It also is quite time-consuming. Even though I didn’t finish, I will link to the result of that effort.
insights
- I do much better painting for about an hour at a time. Beyond that, I get tired and have difficulty holding the brush.
- The paint itself looks great when I’m working on it and then looks sandy after it dries. (I did a Google search on this issue, but didn’t find answers.)
- Adding ink makes the painting more visible when it’s used online.
- It’s hard for me to separate reporting process from how well I like the product once it’s done.