Drawing in painting

For this exercise I made a few sketches before making my final decision

IMG_3993

IMG_3991

IMG_4001

I thought a sketch of my paint brushes would be interesting, so I decided to do a Still Life of some of the equipment I was working with at the time - a small jar with a slightly tilted red and white top which had some fast-drying medium in the bottom, a bigger jar containing my brushes, and a greenish rag.

To give some kind of reference background to my composition I included my paint box in the second drawing, behind my brush jar, even though I was working on quite a small table and the objects on my initial composition were if fact on two adjacent surfaces, not on the same table or at the same level. I decided however to invent the scene – depicting my objects and the paint box as if they were all together on the same table, though my paint box in the drawing appears much smaller than it actually is, which doesn't matter for the exercise.

Final work

Conclusions

It was difficult to retain the drawn image, as I used a Raw Umber wash for the initial drawing and the later painting almost obscured the drawing. So as not to lose it I went over the edges of the objects in the drawing with Ivory Black using a very thin brush. Though it was difficult to maintain consistency in the thickness of the lines I like the loose drawing effect that the thin brush strokes made.

Also, as I was working in daytime with the light coming from a big window behind me there were no dramatic light and shadow effects. I kept squinting to try to see more clearly where the darker and lighter areas were but it was difficult to get a sense of depth, and I think I need to improve my observation skill.

It was also difficult to depict the transparency of the jars and still show their contents, as there was no strong colour difference between the parts of the brushes inside the jar and the parts above.

One of the main challenges for me is capturing backgrounds – it takes me ages to find a way to harmonise the background with the composition without depicting all the things around the main composition, though I think in this case the final result isn’t too bad.

The table was invented, and I tried to harmonise the colour of the surface with an object in the picture to unify it using Vermeer’s technique in The Music Lesson. He used the same white for the vase and for the sleeve of the teacher, and my idea was to use the same creamy colour on the table surface as in the second brush from the right, which I think works.

Overall, I think the composition looks reasonable - the corner of the rag on the left takes your eye towards the small jar and then towards the large jar and the paintbrushes. The paint box might be a bit too dark and too small, but it gives a background to the brushes, and its position takes your eye to the arrangement of the brushes, giving a sort of three-dimensional effect which I think looks organic.