Tablespoon

Oil on Aluminum Panel, 9x12"
I've taken a few days off and now it's time to get back to work and create more paintings for my show! It was a little challenging to get back into the groove, but I was very happy with the way this turned out. I'm enjoying making up different backgrounds and experimenting with paint textures and edges. The tablespoon itself was painted from life.






























Here is a close-up of some edges. The dark base was painted first. Then, I scraped off everything except the dark border, and I went in with my white paint, using a palette knife to obtain the interesting edges. I like the effect it gives-one surface floating on top of another. Then, I scraped out some of the white paint and put in the tablespoon last.


















This is a close-up of the tablespoon. Although this looks like a tightly-rendered object, it is actually very "painterly" up close. The key is getting the colors and shapes as accurate as possible. I try to lay things down in one stroke and not muddle around (easier said than done). The thin highlights are made with flake white; the lead in this paint gives it a "ropey" quality, allowing the painter to make extremely fine lines. This paint is made by Studio Products; they excel at making different types of white paint (I routinely use at least 3 different whites, depending on what effect I need).