white on white

This painting of a large oval platter sitting on a white table cloth. The dish it self is 2 feet long and measures about 40 inches on the canvas. This monochromatic (maybe it is more of a non-o-chromatic) subject has offered up some interesting challenges. Working white on white I still made use of my full pallet. I focused more on the color temperature of the paint. This painting with it's oversized ellipse as a subject offered more challenges then the lack of color, I needed an accurate representation of the shape. Typically I tend to freehand all the shapes in my paintings. Not wanting to exhibit a warped and distorted likeness of the dish, I needed to render the ellipses accurately. I worked out the shapes I wanted and created a paper stencil to insure faithful depiction of the platter. This is a technique I recall from my childhood, my father used it with his still life paintings. The crest on the platter is different than what I painted on my canvas. I replaced the top two lines of copy within the crest with my logo, the foreshorten words looked to much like a face.

30" x 48" oil on canvas

some sort of pods

Out side of the Modesto's Senior Center where I am currently teaching an oil painting class is this tree with some pod shape growths upon it. There are green ones and some older looking brown ones. I'm not sure what type of tree this is, I imagine it to have some orchid like flowers on it is spring or earlier summer–but I do not know if it so.

I teach there for a few hours on Monday afternoons. The paintings in this post are from the first 3 classes of this session. I set up my easel and a small still life before each class. My fellow painters typically are working on subjects of there choosing, typically using photographic references. Although I am busy with assisting students during the class I try to squeeze in a brush stroke or two on my painting as I go. I am trying to instill the concept that a painting does not have to take a lot of time to complete. As the class size has grown to a dozen or more my time to work on my paintings is often cut short.

Having a little less time to work on the above painting, it seems less complete, but it may be my favorite of the three. The course runs in 6 week sessions, there is only one class left in this session – it has passed quickly. Another session begins the following week.

each 8" x 6.5" oil on board