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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Limited Stroke Challenge- "A Real Lemon!" Study #2

Study#2
In my second painting, I wanted to try to use even less strokes.  I tried for half of the 25 aiming for 13.  So instead of doing the blue bottle in 2 pieces of blue and pieces of light blue and yellow, I painted the bottle cobalt in all one stroke, using a lot of paint mixed with mineral spirits.  Then I added the light blue reflection and the reflection from the yellow over the transparent blue. So instead of using 4 strokes on the bottle, I used three.  For the shadow behind the bottle, which had some light in it from light coming through the bottle, I mixed the basic shadow color and then added a little more blue because I thought it was too brown.  A happy accident happened and the blue which was not thoroughly mixed on my brush made the effect of a light shining through the bottle, all in one stroke.  That effect had taken me three strokes the first time around.  Two for the two different colors and one to correct the value.   I did the lemon in three stokes instead of 4 the second time. The biggest save on strokes was in the background and foreground.  I mixed a lot of very liquid paint and did both the background in two strokes opposed to 3 and foreground in one stroke instead of two.  I also left out the more minor highlights on the bottle.  I used a #10 (worn) flat for this study, also saving more strokes.

Now if you are not a painter, please don't look at the drawing aspect!  I know that my bottle is lopsided in both studies and that the lemon is very sharp-nosed!  Those things were not the object of the challenge.

2 comments:

  1. Gloria, I am really impressed that you painted this in such few strokes--much harder than it sounds! You've inspired me to aim higher (well, actually lower in this case!) Happy Painting!

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  2. Thanks, Jane. I am glad you enjoyed it.

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