Vanity Choices

For this still life, I gathered a few objects around the theme of the "girly-girl" items that are part of my routine.   Lipstick is my prime vanity item.   I seldom don't have lipstick on, except for maybe when I go to bed.   So if I was going to make this painting an expression of the elements of my vanity, it had to have lipstick in it.

The perfume bottle in the still life is one of my favorites, Red Door.  I discovered the perfume Red Door back in the early 90's.   An engineer with whom I was working at the time wore it, telling me that her husband actually picked it out.   He had gone to the mall and spent a significant amount of time scoping out perfumes for her.   He finally narrowed it down to Red Door.   If you knew the lovely person this perfume was for,  you would know that it was totally in character for her to be fine with a perfume that she would wear because her husband liked it.   I liked it so much that I have been enjoying its floral fragrance ever since.


Vanity Choices Still Life Set-Up

To the assembly I added a gold bracelet, gold earrings, gifts from my husband.  (That makes me feel less vane!) And why not double the glitz with a vanity mirror?

(Speaking of my husband, I used the still life shelf that he customized in my studio.   This very clever marvel is deserving of its own post, so I will go into detail on it in a separate writing soon.)


Vanity Choices

The canvas was 11x14 so the items are "larger than life" in the painting.   In setting up the composition, the red perfume bottle cap grabbed the most attention, but by strategically positioning the bracelet, earrings and mirror, additional dabs of red was spread around the scene in their shiny reflections.     However, when I painted the pretty red reflections in the bracelet and earrings, it looked false and gaudy.   I had to tone down the red in those items even though I felt it no longer captured how bright they really were.   I still want to add them in somehow.

I really like the mirror images and it makes me want to experiment more with including this little mirror.

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