Same still life arrangement as for exercises 11 and 12. I had again pre-prepared a Gerstaeker 24 x 30 cm canvas board with a ‘distressed’ ground using acrylics left over from previous work and applied with a palette knife. I decided this time to go for a dominant background colour of orange/red (Cadmium Orange/Cadmium Red) and a foreground focus of Primary Cyan.
To complete my colour palette, I chose Oriental Violet, Hooker’s Green and Cadmium Deep Yellow to add some contrasting colour, using White Titanium for tonal adjustments.
For brushes, I restricted myself to Royal & Langnickel sizes 2 & 12 filbert and SAA size 4 round.
The mood I have tried to evoke in this still life study is one of harmony and dissonance:
Orange/Red – feelings of energy and warmth | Yellow – feelings of cheeriness
Blue – feelings of coolness | Green – feelings of restfulness | Violet – feelings of depth
The not-so-subtle shadows on the foreground around the bowl and overhanging books give the painting a bit of an abstract type feel, which is probably enhanced in a way by the complementary orange background and blue foreground.
I’m not sure that the top-left light streak works the way I thought that it would – I find it distracting – and in hindsight I would have left that out all together.
So, here is my attempt at a still life with colour evoking a mood:
Exercise 13 – still life with colour used to evoke mood – finished study (click on image to enlarge)
When I place all three colour still lifes together this what I see:
Exercise 11 – colour accuracy still life – finished (click on image to enlarge)
Exercise 12 – still life with complementary colours – finished study (click on image to enlarge)
Exercise 13 – still life with colour used to evoke mood – finished study (click on image to enlarge)
Exercise 11 ‘Colour accuracy’ – light and airy feel with colours reflecting what my eyes saw.
Exercise 12 ‘Complementary colours’ – depth and mysterious feeling.
Exercise 13 ‘Mood colour study’ – harmonious abstractness (well a wee bit!).
Exercise 13- Still life with colour used to evoke mood ← click the link to download a .pdf version of this page
Stuart Brownlee – 512319
16th February, 2014
