All about ... the Art Course Day 10

Well that's another of my '101 in 1001 days' completed and ticked off the list.  It was the final session of the art course today, and I'm really sad that it is over - I have loved every single part of it.  It's not just the learning and the attempts at the art but also the people I've met.  We got on well as a group and the other four are all planning to continue on the intermediate course, starting in September, but it runs during teaching time so I can't join them.  I feel more than a little sad about that, but we have plans to meet for lunch and to keep in touch.

 

Anyway, on to today.  Still life! 

 

Up till now our starting point has been a very simple line drawing to show the base for blocking in the colour, but today we were actually drawing what we could see on the table in front of us. We started with a practice sketch (which I've forgotten to photograph), with Maggie taking us through each stage of drawing the bowl and the lemons.  We then painted the whole page with a cream coloured wash so that it could dry while we stopped for coffee and cake, and after the break we applied the dark blue background.

 

Then on to our smaller piece of paper to practice painting a lemon, created by applying four different paint colours.  I messed up my shadow on this one, it's too heavy and doesn't have enough of a curve on it to create the correct rounded shape.  Interestingly I actually have five colours because I also seemed to have picked up some red, which you can see in the dark orange streaks in the centre.  I've no idea how I managed that as the red was nowhere near the yellow on the palette, but I quite like the effect!

The background was dry (it is supposed to be mottled like that!), so we started adding the pale blue lines on the bowl, then a darker blue and a darker creamy brown on the right of the bowl to add shadows.  And finally, we painted the lemons.

I'm really pleased with this painting, although I think it needs some shading on the inside of the bowl as it wouldn't be the same shade on both sides - there should be some shadow on one part of it. Anyway, that's where we stopped and I'm happy with my effort. 

 

We also got to bring the lemons home with us so I'll be making some lemon curd tomorrow!