Final Still-Life Painting

 

Purpose:

• To communicate all of your knowledge about color and painting techniques to create a final, more complex, still-life painting (than your smaller still-life studies);
• To use your knowledge about composition and placement to arrange your fruit and/or vegetable to create a strong composition.

Artist Studied: Vincent van Gogh

       Referring back to my blog post regarding my still-life studies, I think that I improved on the techniques that I thought I needed to improve on. One of the techniques was blending values more effectively. In my still-life studies, I didn't blend values well at all so I focused on doing this to give my final a more 3D feel. After working hard on blending, I think that I succeeded in my goal to make my final look more 3D and I'm glad that I focused on that aspect of my work.
       The most important thing that I learned from this unit was how to blend my values more effectively. As explained above, I think that it added an aspect to my work that I was lacking in my still-life studies. I also learned how to paint somewhat loosely. This allowed me to worry less about little details as I was working and look more at the painting as a whole and how to develop it further. I forced myself to only worry about details at the end, but since being precise is a habit I can't break, I didn't paint as loosely as I could've. Another thing that I learned is that using complimentary colors can bring more life to a painting. I used complimentary colors in two of my three subjects and they stand out more than the other subject that is a similar color to the background. This technique gives the eye somewhere to focus on when looking at my painting and it makes the values pop more. Ultimately, these learnings added to the effectiveness of my painting in depicting a still-life.