Monday, March 12, 2007

daily painting practice - lemons and ginger jar

A simple design is the best way to practice on a specific idea in painting. I wanted to practice painting yellow in shadow. Yellow is a very hard color for me to make luminous. Reading David Leffel's book helps but practicing and experimentation is the real key to understanding how it works.
This little ginger jar has an interesting design on it. I am not choosing to focus on the design this time. So I'll suggest it with very loose strokes.
click on the picture to enlarge the image

Lemons and Ginger Jar
6"x6"
oil on masonite
SOLD

This was a fun exercise in painting lemons mostly in shadow. Though I find it very hard to paint the correct yellow, the painting still manages to hold my attention. I'll need do more with these lemons to see if I can get that color. Perhaps doing a series of 100 lemon paintings would help.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely painting Peter. Is that natural sunlight on the subject?...

tlwest said...

very nice I like the shadows

Peter Yesis said...

Thank you both-

Yes JR that is natural north light pouring from my window. In your case Southern light must be what artists die for down under.