Sunday, February 8, 2009

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.

5 comments:

elfrida schragen said...

Love your colors. Very cheery paintings.

eLIZabeth Floyd said...

Thanks Elfrida.

Mary Sheehan Winn said...

it's a nice painting and an informative post. I like reading about the process.

eLIZabeth Floyd said...

Thanks Mary. Writing blog posts are great ways to remind myself what I was thinking when painting. It helps me distill and learn from the experience.

eLIZabeth Floyd said...
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