Day 12 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days and the Stages of a Winter Scene

15-12 Just a Little Garlic - Oil on Copper, 3"x4"

Well, my painting name organization needs better organizing!  I realized today as I was posting photos of this little garlic painting that I somehow messed up my numbering - I missed 6 (I think - I'm not totally sure yet).  Tomorrow I have to figure it out and then rename them properly on Daily Paintworks among other sites.  Y.U.C.K.

Okay, on to more fun topics like GAAAHHHLIC!  I did this little painting of garlic yesterday.  It's small - only 3"x4" unframed (about 8x9 framed).  I enjoyed painting the "white" of the garlic.  Nothing is ever truly white, except possibly a bright reflection, but still, if you look closely, it probably isn't stark white - it probably has a bit of yellow or blue in it.  Anyway, this garlic had so many colors in it when I studied it.  Some teal reflected off the garlic from the fabric, the shadows in some areas looked pinkish and in other areas it looked violet-ish. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to paint and I may be painting some more garlic in the future!  I really did enjoy it.  If you're interested in purchasing "Just a Little Garlic", click here and you'll be redirected to my Daily Paintworks gallery where you can purchase this or some of my other available paintings via PayPal.

Very beginning of the painting - laying in color

This morning, I started another copper painting - this time a little bigger:  8x10.  I have been thinking about doing a winter scene since last week when one morning I looked out at the orange sunrise and saw how everything not in the sun was shrouded in violet.  This painting is 3/4 from my head and about 1/4 from different reference photos.  It still has some work to go, but here's the start.

This first photo shows the very beginning stages.  I wanted to keep this to two colors again - violet and orange.

A little further along, starting to put in some details

In this photo, I started adding some detail.  I got a nice dark color by mixing the violet and orange together.  I felt it was perfect for the trunks of the trees.  I also started working on creating the depth by pushing the trees back and bringing the snow/ground forward.

Starting to add in high and low lights as well as
refining details

In this stage, you can see I'm starting to add in some highlights from the sun as well as some deeper shadows on the trees.  I still need to add some darker values in the trunks and fill out some of the details for the branches.  I don't want to do too much more as I'm liking the simplicity of this.  This is a terrible photo - it's hard to get a good photo after dark.  What you can't see is that in the distance behind the trees, I only used a very thin layer of paint so a lot of the copper will show.

 Finished painting tomorrow!

Stella is doing much better today!  Franklin felt she needed some TLC so he obliged.  He really loves Stella and is completely over-protective of her.  Although, I'm not sure she fully enjoyed the TLC as his head must weigh at least half of what she does!