Gloria Jean's

6″ x 6″ oil on Raymar canvas board
“Lemon Yellow”

Not having done any painting today, I was about to go to bed when I decided to use some left over paint from yesterday and spend only 30 minutes on a painting.

For the past week, I have been doing small paintings of faces. They will be put on a separate blog that will only be for faces. Some of the faces will be portraits and some will be caricatures. I have not been getting anything posted on this blog for a few days because I have been doing those face paintings. I am curious to learn how much practice or how many faces I will have to paint in order to be able to complete one in 30 minutes. Currently I am spending two to four hours on each one.

Doing this small 30 minute painting is the first step to my learning to time myself and complete a painting in 30 minutes. I have always found that practicing still life helps me in all areas of painting particularly portraits. Logically, if I can do a still life in 30 minutes I should be able to do a face in 30 minutes. This painting is priced at $30.00 plus $5.00 shipping.

6″ X 6″ Oil on Raymar canvas board
“Cantaloupe with Grapes”

For this painting:

The colors I used in this painting were various cadmium yellows, reds, and cadmium orange. The cadmium colors are brilliant but transparent colors. They work great over a dry white background, but I was working on wet dark background so it was a real challenge to get the brilliance I wanted. This photo is not an exact representation of the color in the original painting but it is the best I could get.

For the orange on the cantaloupe, I tried mixing cadmium yellows with cadmium red light but  that resulting orange was not as brilliant as I wanted. The only solution was to use cadmium orange strait from the tube.  Because of its transparency, I had to apply it several times, letting the bottom layer dry a little overnight.

If you are painting flowers or anything that requires brilliant colors, you will need a full range of colors that you can use strait from the tube.  I like to have cadmium yellow light, medium and dark, cadmium orange, cadmium red light medium and dark and alizarian crimson for my color range between yellow and red. These are only needed if you want the most intense (brilliant) colors. Otherwise you can usually  mix the color you need from your basic primary colors. This is because anytime you mix one color with another color, you will lose some intensity.

Grapes are always a challenge. I used Prussian blue because it is the darkest blue in existence. I also mixed the blue with ivory black for the darker less intense areas. I used dioxazine purple for the base color of the grapes. It is a more intense purple than I would have gotten by mixing red and blue. Prussian blue is not a good blue to mix the color purple because it has a greenish cast to it.

If you have to mix purple you should use ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson for the best result.  If you want a very intense purple, buy some and use it strait from the tube.  (The red highlights on the grapes are cadmium red light.)

6″ X 6″ Oil on Raymar canvas board
“Two Pots”

The signature on my paintings will be the G and J combined initials you see here and I will sign them with “Gloria Jean” on the back.  I really like these pots. This little painting was a great exercise for painting white against a  black background. I am sure enjoying doing these little paintings.

The colors you see in the photos here may not be exactly the same as seeing the painting in person.  I have tried to adjust them to match the actual color and value I see.  Yet when I add more contrast to get the darks darker, the whites get a bit washed out.  Below is another shot that more closely matches the value of the pots, but they are still a little too bluish in color. I can understand why professional photographers can command the big bucks.

“Dark Delicious”
6″ X 6″ Oil on Raymar Canvas board

When teaching beginning art classes to serious students I like to have what I call “The Apple Class.”  It is the basic exercise for learning to make an object look round or three dimensional and it is also a good exercise for using red.

When I paint, I like to have at the least a double primary pallet;  using two reds, two yellows and two blues.  (A triple primary pallet is even better.)

For the reds in this apple I used only cadmium red light and alizarian crimson.  These are my most basic red colors that I don’t like being without.

Since I am just getting back into painting after a long break,  I decided to go back to my basic apple class to renew what I know about color.  The darker parts of the apple were made by mixing alizarian crimson with Ivory black.

I set the apple on a wooden plaque and put two small black canvas boards behind it and painted it from life. Painting from life is an exercise in observation because every time you look at your subject, it has changed or you see it differently. You are actually seeing it with two eyes and there are two different perspectives involved.

In painting something from life, there comes a time when you realize that it is the image on the canvas that is important, not the object you are looking at.  My job is to represent it the best way I can.

Below is a picture of the set up used.

10″ x 13″ Oil on Masonite
Painted from Life

Click here to buy a print or card of this painting at
Artistwebsites.com

Original 10″ X 13″
Oil on Masonite
Painted from life.

Get an 8 x 10″ framed print
or a giclee  copy  of it
printed on canvas at
artistswebsites.com