Single Lemon Still Life Painting

Single Lemon – 6" x 6" – Oil on Canvas Panel

Last weekend I started this painting, but it got late and I was unable to finish it. So on Saturday I spent some time completing it. This time when looking at the lemon, I really worked on evaluating the different values of the lemon in front of me. A lot of artists like to simplify and distill an object to its basic features, sometimes simplifying the value scale to as little as 4-6 tones, and typically I do the same thing. This time I decided to see if I could interpret the lemon and the various values to as many nuances as I could discern. I used color saturation and desaturation as a means also to create subtle changes in the value of the lemon where a real value tone would be too strong of a change.

I was inspired to paint like this after attending my Friday drawing class, where I perceived that the instructor, Robert Liberace, has an amazingly fine tuned sense of value. So I decided that if I want to draw like him, I need to start honing that skill of observing and recording values in greater detail than I have before. So this painting is the start of a new method to explore.