Red Wine and Cherries WIP

Here's where I stopped today. I haven't worked on this painting for the past two weeks...it's an early spring in Texas and all my flowerbeds were calling my name. It's a real shame that we have to sleep at night when there are so many wonderful things to get done.

Anyway, I've stopped here after introducing some blue into the stopper facets because I really need to decided on my dark background there on either side of the bowl before going any further. I was laying in different reds in the bowl to start on the fan facet, but decided I'd better work the darkest darks first. It's been rather challenging coming up with reds and purple/burgundy colors that don't fight each other. Started to throw the crystal on the gray side, but opted for soft blues instead as I'm thinking of a Midnight Blue kind of background to get some really dramatic darks in. It'll also make the blues more pale as the contract will be greater. Haven't decided on the cloth yet, but there's plenty of time for that.

Red Wine and Cherries WIP

Earlier this week I decided I wanted to paint crystal again and had this drawing done. Painting glass and crystal is somehow very calming and soothing to me. I jokingly say it's really "paint by numbers", but when you see detail and love to paint detail...that's about true. I wanted this to be with analogous colors so I've changed the chardonnay to red wine and I'm having to explore some new reds. I've found that my bright transparent reds don't really work cohesively with the purples and magentas of the red wine. I also realize now that there will be lots of glazing going on to establish the wine level in the decantur realistically and I can't do that until I really settle on the right colors. Sure is nice to be able to make adjustments and live with it for a little bit...this one may take me a few more days than I had planned. And, I'm not all that good at glazes so we'll just see what happens here.

Fruit Plate

Here is a small painting completed yesterday for my continuing little monthly blurb on PaintingFriends forum. Since I am really crazy for detail and paint from photos, this was a little exercise in sharing what I'm looking for and see when I paint a setup. Of course, I had to come up with something with reds in it...and cherries are always my first choice...sure wish they were a bit less expensive in the grocery right now...they're almost too expensive to swallow and enjoy. We've been working on color palettes and this one is just red, yellow, and blue...primaries are always fun as you can go so many different ways or just stay with the basics.