Monday, September 29, 2008

White Pumpkins--Still Life Oil Painting

Yesterday I took on the Different Strokes Challenge of the week and painted this 8x10 inch still life oil painting. It was an interesting value study. My usual palette is quite warm, but the reference photo led me toward a cooler range. It was a stretch for me and I finally warmed the painting up with a little bit of cadmium yellow on the sunny side of the pumpkins. When I was finished, satisfaction with my results was absent. I wanted the warmth of my usual palette so badly that I cropped the original photo and painted again. The second painting is the result of my continued efforts. The drawing of the pumpkins is more precise, but the effect is completely different. I'm undecided about which painting I prefer. The second painting does not capture the mood of the original reference; artistic license is hard at work. Here's my second effort, a 6x10 inch result. What is your preference? If you visit the Different Strokes Blog, you can discover which one I finally enetered as the challenge painting.


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4 comments:

Unknown said...

hmmm...pretty!

Kim Caro said...

but how do you know what the challenge is? hmf looks awesome.

Kari said...

Those are very pretty, great job!

Nancy Merkle Fine Art said...

The challenge changes every week. A reference photo is offered and the challenge is for artists to create their own version of the original photo. The details can be found here:

http://differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com/