For this exercise, I wanted to achieve the best tones, and so I chose objects with reflective surfaces, these being an apple, small ceramic jug, wine glass and shampoo bottle with a metallic finish.
After making a quick tonal study in soft pastels which is shown above, I moved onto a sheet of cotton canvas and lightly sketched the composition with a pencil, as I didn’t want to create any dark harsh lines on the page. My next move was to begin painting the different tones of the composition, and my choice in colour was payne’s grey, as I knew this colour would produce decent reflections and shadows. For this piece, I actually used watercolour from a tube, and so used the concentrated medium for the darker areas of the composition and diluted it for lighter areas and wherever there was a gradient effect in the arrangement. For the highlights I either left the canvas black or went over the payne’s grey areas with white acrylic to emphasise the highlights and the surface of the objects.
As this was a quick tonal study, I am pleasantly surprised at how it turned out as I had never really explored looking at an arrangement in basic terms of tones and reflections, and have nearly always ended painting what I see. However, this effect in study paintings is a new favourite of mine, which I will definitely be using in the future and during this course.
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 