“Plums, lemons and a bowl.”
I wanted to start the new year with, yet another still life. And this is not difficult in this weather. Dump and cold. And frosty in the mornings. Anyway, enough with moaning about the lovely weather. So, I wanted to do a still life. It was rather difficult to choose the subject matter, because I did lots of still life paintings recently and is hard not to repeat myself. I didn’t want flowers, because they don’t tend to last long, especially not in the winter, but something organic still, do next best option was obvious: fruits.
I did a simple composition of two lemons and two plums, with the red bowl I have used before. I used a dimmed light to illuminate the set up and low light in the room (also known as studio). For the colours, I used my usual palette and for medium, some turps and some de Mayerne medium, diluted with turps.
I Painted alla prima, over few sessions. First couple of layers, I have applied with a bristle brush, and finished it working with sable or other soft artificial brushes. I found that the life span of a sable brush is very short when painting in oil, but I like the effect, better than artificial ones.
So, here it is, my first painting of 2019:
“Plums, lemons and a bowl.”
Oil on linen.
24 X 30cm (10” X 12”).
