Youtube live class with Dennis, starting Mar 29, 2017 - Still life

[Val]

  Wow Linley!!! Way to go  jump right in the deep end! I have a habit of doing just that! Well done you!
Dark backgrounds are tricky to do, since I am no master at conquering them (yet!), I'll let Mr. D. take this one. 

[MaryAnne Long]

Sharon

It looks fabulous in that frame.

Good luck with your show.

Aloha

Mea

[Win]

Wow Sharon fabulous painting, Im sure it will find a new home very quickly.

Well done Linley you have done a great job, I cant give advise on your background as I am yet to understand W/C,  it is my current nemisis    

[dennis]

Linley, leave the background as it is. The camera is much more sensitive than the eye, because the brain blocks out a lot of the blue reflections. What looks good in the real can look terrible in the photograph, and I'm talking mainly of black here. I often have to be very careful when photographing black. I usually have to turn the painting around such that there is no strong light bouncing off it.

[linley.plester]

Hi Dennis.... (and everyone else) Thanks for your kind words. Dennis, I did turn the painting around, and  the sstreaks appeared in another section of the background, proving it is mainly the light. I photographed it again today when we actually had sunshine, and the photos improved considerably. However If I examine it with a critical eye in various locations around the house, it still looks blotchy, so, in for a penny.... I've carefully put on masking fluid and made a mask out of greaseproof paper which I'll weigh down with lead fishing weights. Then I'm going to spritz it and lightly try stroking it horizontally.

Details

 I think it did improve a little. Although the camera is playing tricks again because the natural light is low. I feel better about it anyway.  You are right about the blue... I couldn't get my background as dark as I wanted with my greens, so I sneaked in a bit of indigo, which no doubt gives it an extra bluish cast.
This time I carefully followed your instructions and washed the brush assiduously during the mask application, and ended up with a perfectly clean brush. Also, as I removed this lot of masking fluid, I discovered I had missed tiny fragments of the last lot, and so had to do a few more touch up jobs around some of the edges... So all your warnings came to roost, if I can mix my metaphors. Lessons learned for the future I hope.

[linley.plester]

PS: I'm looking forward to trying it in a frame in the hopes that it will improve even more, perhaps be a bit like Sharon's.

[linley.plester]

Details

You  all must be heartily sick of my version of this lesson by now. However I have made some slight improvement I think.  Some areas of the dark background are shiny and some areas are stubbornly flat and dull, despite repeated re- washing/stroking with a large soft brush. It's as if there is no gum Arabic on the flat spots. (I even considered glazing the whole thing with a coating of gum Arabic, but as I've never used gum arabic as a glaze before, I chickened out. Can anyone tell me why these repaired accidental  :confused:water spots are so flat?

[Val]

You may have mentioned it before, but what paper are you using?

[linley.plester]

  Val. Saunders St Cuthbert's Mill 140lb. on a block. I don't think many other papers would have stood up to he repeated wettings. It did buckle a bit, but the flat colour spots seem to quite localized, where I accidentally dripped water on the background while painting the foreground.  I did wonder if somehow I could have ruined the sizing of the paper with too heavy an application of paint, but there is no sign of wear or abrasion. (I've read a lot about paper strengths and weaknesses, but don't have much real time experience.) Or could they be a sort of grease spot?... finger marks perhaps?

[Sacgal/Sharon]

Thanks everyone for the compliments on the framed version of "Still Life with Pomegranates" (that's the name, Val!) The image is approx 10x10 - framed it's 16x16. Got lots of compliments on it at the show on Saturday, but no buyers.

However I did sell 11 paintings that day - so left a very happy artist!  Interestingly enough, several of the paintings I sold were some of my oldest - 2 years old! As I always say, one must have a lot of patience to be a selling artist - sometimes you just have to wait for the right collector to show up!

[dennis]

Congrats on the sales 

[MaryAnne Long]

Way to go, Sharon!!!

aloha

mea

[MaryAnne Long]

Linley

When I look at the intricacy of that painting, I commend you for even starting it.  It looked daunting.  Mine is still in the lesson 1 stage!

You did well.  Be proud for sticking with it.

aloha

mea

[Sacgal/Sharon]

  Dennis & Mea!

Linley - I'd like to suggest you take the class again. I think with all of the advice you've received, I bet doing it one more time will give you the results you're looking for. Trust me, when I first started taking Dennis' classes, there were many of them I did twice! As Mea said, bravo for your efforts - I think you've done very well!

[linley.plester]

Actually, Sharon, taking the class again is on my to do list... but somehow I seem to be stalled on correcting this and another painting (my pop art lady with the twisted nose and claw-like fingers). If I do it again, I'd like to try it in acrylics, but first, I'll have to take The PB class on using acrylics like watercolour. I do think I might give the poor still life a rest for a while and try looking at it with fresh eyes. It definitely looked healthier this morning.  I had actually considered doing a Val and carefully cutting off the foreground and then pasting it back onto a new painted background. (Val said she once chopped off the bottom inch or so of a canvas.)  By the way, thanks for helping me out with the understanding with Maria. You too Stoney.