Painting “Bowl of Apples”
Lately I’ve been focusing on painting from life. My goals are to improve my painting speed, loosen up my style, and learn more about color mixing. I’ve painted from photographs for so long, even in my college days, and I always find myself getting lost in the details. I work full time outside of painting, and I need to be able to feel like I’m accomplishing something in the few hours a week I have to paint. I was tired of spending weeks or months on a painting, itching to finish it so I could start a new one.
I painted less and less after college, as life got in the way and things took an unexpected path. This past year, I finally feel settled, and it feels great to dive back into making art.
On to my still life of apples. I actually followed this Alla Prima still life painting demo by Damian Osborne. Alla prima means “direct” or wet on wet painting, done in a single session, as opposed to layered or “indirect” painting. My goal was to do this completely alla prima, which I didn’t quite manage.
I set up my still life inside a cardboard box, with a floor lamp to light the scene. This gave a single, more dramatic light source than the indirect light coming from my north- and west-facing windows.
The still life setup.
I started with a 12x16 canvas that I had already toned a reddish brown. I used a burnt umber mixed with some gamsol to draw directly onto the canvas. I scrubbed in the shadows and wiped away with a rag. This was my underpainting. I let it dry overnight.
My “Bowl of Apples” underpainting.
The next day, I set out to paint the entire painting in one session. I pretty much followed Damian’s tutorial for the color selections, because previously I had been working with a very limited palette (I’m talking one blue, one red, one yellow , burnt umber and titanium white… specific color choices depending on what temperature was appropriate). I started with the crevice shadows of the apples, which were nearly black. I used sap green and permanent magenta, which made a semi-transparent deep brown. Then I moved on to the shadows, using cadmium red (Rembrandt), burnt umber, and permanent red violet (Rembrandt - a new color for me!). I actually ended up blending into the crevice shadows, due to the transparency of that color and my desire to finish this painting in one layer. The mid-tones got cadmium red, permanent red violet, and some ultramarine blue (Rembrandt). For that tart, cool yellow-green color dappling the apples, I used cadmium yellow (Windsor & Newton), lemon yellow (Rembrandt), and phthalo green (Rembrandt). There were some mid-tone areas of the apples that leaned warm and required cadmium red and cadmium orange (Rembrandt). Finally, I used cadmium red, permanent red violet, and white for the highlights.
I finished the apples completely (well, minus the stems) before I moved on to the rest of the painting. I didn’t note down exactly what I used for the bowl, but there was definitely burnt umber mixed with ultramarine blue for the shadows, plus dashes of cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, or yellow ochre for lighter toned wood and highlights.
The drapery is where I got pulled into working a second session on this painting. I worked on this for four hours, and in the end, I felt that the drapery shadows were still not deep enough. Plus, I struggled to paint those pesky apple stems wet-on-wet.
End of Session 1 of my apple painting.
The next day, I went back in and only allowed myself to deepen the shadows in the drapery and paint the stems on the apples. This took about an hour.
I’m quite happy with how the painting turned out. The ruby apples are really popping! I learned a lot creating my first larger still life painting and an early attempt at alla prima.
The final product.
