A Jar and Grapes

Red Grapes and Jar Still Life

I was in Session One of a workshop with one of my favorite artists from the New England region, Eli Cedrone.   She had sent out a lesson plan in advance of the class which included some interesting YouTube links for reference. 


Abstracted Thumbnail

American Artist Richard Diebenkorn was influenced by the work of Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.   He was drawn to their bold palette, the flattening of the picture plane and the minimal blending of color. He was interested in the geometry of a space – be it a still life, a field seen from above or an interior with figure. It is that convergence of lines and angles, forms distilled to their primary shapes, that connects his figurative paintings to his abstractions.

Eli challenged us to incorporate our twist on Diebenkorn's simplification and abstraction.  The mission was to render a non-representational depiction of our chosen still life set ups and to come up with a more striking and interesting composition. 



A Jar and Grapes - In Progress

As always, I love an art challenge and Eli's creative lesson plan challenged my status quo. With a 12x16 canvas staring at me, I started thinking that a few red grapes and a jar of Ikea pickled herring (my lunch) would be a weak and less-than-thrilling painting.   However, the objective of designing the painting instead of painting the subject exactly as designed, saved the day.

I decided to "split" the canvas into three zones.  Using the viewfinder I made three independent views of the grapes and jar set up.   I was trying to make a black and white abstract that had nice variation, without yet thinking about how this would become a red grape and jar still life.   (Important:  The composition makes or breaks the painting)   We next did a flat line drawing of the design.  By the time paint was applied, the three vertical zones were interleaved.   At this point, the actual set up in front of me was only for color and shadow reference, because my black and white thumbnail was my composition blueprint.



A Jar and Grapes - Loud and Loose

Here is the end product;  more loud and loose than usual.

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Black and White and Torrit Grey 2014

Comerant

Perched on High

My favorite oil color manufacturer is Gamblin and each year they run a contest challenging participants to create a painting using only black, white and Gamblin's custom color, Torrit Gray.     Torrit Gray is a free giveaway color produced from collecting all the factory pigment that would ordinarily end up in the trash.   Rather than discard the pigment, an annual Torrit Gray blend is created, tubed, and then given away with Gamblin purchases as a customer bonus and environmental initiative.  I have entered the competition for the past two years, and this year I entered again.

Barnyard

If you paint, you may want to consider entering.   It is really interesting to see what people come up with when they are color-limited.   All the entries are posted on the Gamblin website and the company has been very generous in sending a free gift to participants.  I really love Gamblin - for many reasons - and the paint is manufactured in Oregon.

My strategy when brainstorming my entries was to hunt through my digital photo archive for a photo that would make a strong black and white painting.   A strong dark/light tonalism usually means added strength for the composition.  Obviously things that don't have much color or are already black and white were things to consider.  

Maybe you could try it too!