A new year, new challenges, How will you challenge yourself?
I have decided to try and improve my still life paintings. They require all the skills of observation, working from life, checking the angles, proportions, tonal values etc.
In the past, I was rarely happy with my still life paintings, I always felt it was an ‘old fashioned’ genre. So with the onset of winter when my ‘plein air’ painting almost ceases, I took the bull by the horns, and set up new studio lighting and began in earnest. In case I ran out of ideas and motivation, I signed up for the ‘Strada easel challenge’. A daily painting challenge during January, to compete for prizes including some Strada easels, top of the range American kit, used for plein air painting.
I wasn’t especially interested in the prizes, just in the daily painting excercises and any improvements in my compositions and still life painting skills. It is still early days, but I am enjoying the process and the challenge that each day has to offer.
Shown here are a plastic bottle of refined linseed oil, as used by artists everywhere. Also a bottle of Delerium Tremens, a favourite 8 1/2% belgian beer, together with a pewter tankard, and a bottle of Prosecco from Italy.