Friday, January 14, 2011

Quiet Pleasures

The set-up

For my one-person show in April, I will have many new landscape and still life paintings. Recently I finished a number of landscapes, but couldn't get focused on demonstrating one of them in this blog.

Now I have begun this still life painting, having acquired the antique books and glasses some months ago and am eager to paint them. A collection of wine bottles with interesting colors and labels is filling my shelves. Since I didn't have any wine bottle decanted, I filled the goblet with water and food coloring: a combination of blue and red. It looks convincing.

The open book didn't want to do exactly what I wanted, so temporarily it is held open with a clothespin. I love these low-tech fixes.

The red ribbon bookmark is a big question, as it doesn't make a lot of sense. However, I think there needs to be more color in the center of the painting. It would be nice if these antique books had color plates, but alas, color printing was in its infancy when these books were printed.

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