“A red onion and an aubergine.”
Still experimenting with still life and discovered that I like more and more painting this genre.
I sometimes struggle finding the subject matter and this was the case this week. The inspiration came when I was shopping fresh things for cooking at the local supermarket. I found aubergines on the shelf, so I thought it would be a nice thing to paint, so I only bought one. Probably I will buy some more to do a few more paintings and obviously to eat them afterwards. In Romanian cuisine we have an roasted aubergine salad, which is delicious, so everything to do with aubergines sorted.
I tried a few compositions and ended up with the aubergine with a red onion. I didn’t use a very strong light, so the shadows are not as strong, and positioning the light very high, I reduced the size of the cast shadow.
I, again, used a reduced palette, few browns, cobalt blue, 2 yellows, purple, amethyst and lake red. For first couple of layers I just used turpentine, then I introduced some de Mayerne medium. I tried to use thicker paint and used more varied brushstrokes for background and foreground. I did the painting in one day, painting alla prima, over few sessions.
So, here it is:
“A red onion and an aubergine.”
Oil on linen.
24 X 30cm (10” X 12”)
