Bite of Red: Apple #2

6x6

Oil on panel

Here's apple study #2. A bitten red delicious as you can see. I read there are more than 50 varieties of this type of apple. I'll be honest, I'm a Macintosh gal from way back, but the red delicious still makes a nice shiny, angular model with lovely cool and warm reds. And it's flesh is a really interesting almost white-yellow-green before it begins it's golden rusty oxidation.

My favorite apple painting story, which I think I'm remembering correctly, was one that the late Helen VanWyk (the wonderful PBS oil painter from many years ago) would share about her mentor. Ms. VanWyk's books are some of the first oil painting books I purchased years ago and they remain some of my favorites.

I'm likely paraphrasing here, but it has always stuck with me. As a young painter, Helen was tasked with a painting a bowl of apples and not until every single apple could be identified individually could she move on. In other words, painting is really observing carefully and recording accurately--which is really for me what these little live studies are really about each day.

Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to running up to our local Cherry Creek Farmer's Market before teaching my first class to find some more inspirational apple/model options. Quick thanks this week to all my home studio  students who are graciously putting up some remodel noise along with me--the end is near! In the meantime, I greatly appreciate your patience and sympathy.    

An Apple a Day?

"Darker at the Core"

8 x 8 oil on linen panel

Price posted when dry! :)

As many of you know, I typically tend toward overall high key paintings, but ever since I painted an almost black plum last week I've been thinking about balancing darker colors. Here, for the background and foreground I've mixed what I like to call "bright black" meaning a very dark value comprised of saturated relatively darker pigments like Thalo Blue, French Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin, Cad Red Light, etc.

Also I had not painted a knife painting a while, so I wanted to work with that as well. For added sparks of color and interest, I also toned the linen canvas panel with a thin but bright wash of Golden Acrylic Pyrrole Red. I noticed on another painter's blog a beautiful series of 31 daily plum paintings which I found very inspiring so perhaps I'll do the same with apples. Not only are apples an appropriate daily subject for September, I think they will be an extra challenge.  We see apples almost everyday and there are many fine paintings of them so how do we make them more intriguing on canvas?  We'll have to wait and see...

In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful, sunny fall weekend. See you in the studio!