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| White Wedding Shoes I, 14 x 18 inches |
Today is "leap day" and my Valentine's Day roses are finally going into the compost pile. I thoroughly enjoyed these red roses for many reasons and the fact that they lasted so long meant they were available for painting several still lives! Today's post shares two more paintings done using the roses. The focal point for each of the two paintings is not actually the roses but the white wedding shoes. Also included in the set up is my pearl pendant, a wedding gift from my husband. In each painting the shoes are placed atop an old style box suitcase with an antique looking clasp.
Painting the roses were easier than expected; I used my palette knife to apply concentric petals. I then came back to apply highlights and dark shadows onto the box. These photos came out pretty dark, a result of trying to minimize the shine from the fresh paint.
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| White Wedding Shoes II, 12 x 16 inches |
The white shoes proved to be more manageable than expected too. I found that painting the negative space around them first made it easy to come back in with shades of dark lavender and white to actually paint the postitive space in. The remaining challenge with the shoes is that they may look too white and too cool. I topped off the shoe highlights with a mixture of titanium white, cadmium red light, and cadmium yellow deep, in an attempt to warm them up. I'm thinking that the shoes are still too white.
Biggest challenge for me were the leaves of the roses. In my first rough in, the leaves looked terrible; in these photos they look better now than they did - but maybe not much better. Since they are not a featured item but simply a supporting element, I talked myself into "roughing up the edges" such that they appear somewhat blurred, and becoming subordinate to everything else.
I'm sure I'll do more on these but for now here are the initial, in-progress paintings, White Wedding Shoes I and II. As always, comments welcome!
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