Saturday, February 7, 2015

Still Life: The Spirit of Adventure

It's been 7 weeks on my first official Still Life at Angel! And WOW! What a project!

The items I chose mostly belong to me except for the sketch book that belongs to my schoolmate, Thibault, and Andy's globe. The time is set over a 100 years ago during a period of discovery where sketching was still the popular of documenting objects and scenes. The camera had already been invented, but I bet paper, ink and colours where still more affordable to the masses.

While working on this project, the track from Pixar's Up! kept playing in my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeAObKaq3pM

Here are some skills I picked up during this tenebrist project:
(The method is called 'tenebrim' as it uses extreme dramatic light and dark lighting to set the stage.)
- Use Liquin - a synthetic, durable medium that dries within a day into a flexible rubbery substance that won't crack your paintings.
- Being able to control and let dry the different areas instead of trying to finish everything at one go.
- A reminder to use the little square cut out holes to determined the initial local colour.
- The dragging method produces sharp and crisp edges for objects in the foreground.


Watch the setting up of my props here:



Drawing stage on a brown-red campitura


 Establishing the darkest areas


 Next, finding the lightest


Adding a general colour in 1st painting


Putting all the details in the 2nd painting