The Finished Still Life!

     Here is the finished painting that I was working on back in January. You can see photos of it in progress in previous posts here (Painting again!) and here (A Dramatic Change in the progress). This painting was heaps of fun and I want to something similar again soon.

I love painting from life and am thinking allot about plein air painting, and am inspired by all the amazing artists I am privileged to learn from on the internet. I just have to figure out some kind of portable painting set up and get out there! (Oh, for a Pochade Box of my own...!)

The last Rose of Summer (Or Autumn!)

     I painted this in one afternoon during the week. I had been working on another painting with reference only from my imagination and it wasn't going so well so I washed the old paint of my piece of  frame glass I use for a palate, picked the last rose in the garden, mixed fresh colours and began to paint. I learnt how to make another shade of brown. All the colours I have in oils are the primaries plus white which is probably a good thing to teach me colour mixing, but it dose feel a bit limited at times. 

 

    I had been wanting to paint a rose in a loose painterly style for a while and from life; fortunately there was still one small pink rose on the bush for me. The box was once my grandmother's sewing box. I didn't spend much time arranging because I just wanted to paint, so a set the box on my desk and placed the rose on it 'any old how' and began. It is on a 10x10 inch canvass, a square shape which I have never used before. Apparently composition is hard to get right in a square, as you can probably tell!