Still Life: Final - Plate and Slippers

For our final, we chose our still life. I wanted mine to be sentimental. Everything in the painting is from a family member. The table was my maternal grandfather's; the white cloth is actually a piece of lace from my paternal grandmother (I decided not to paint the lace detail because it would've competed with the rest of the objects); the white milkglass vase from my mother; those little pink ballet slippers are my little lady's first ballet shoes; and finally, the plate is from the first dish set I bought for my apartment.... and the box is just a box filling in the negative space between the plate and vase, and it adds another pop of color besides the red. 

The most challenging thing about this painting was getting the temperature right in the whites and then in the table, specifically the plate and the vase. At first, I was going to exaggerate the temperatures. I wasn't satisfied with the outcome. Taking more paint, I layered on whites of varying yet slightly-shifted temperates. The table was equally as frustrating. We all know real wood isn't a straight brown. The table is a dark cherry stain. After struggling with the table, and deciding what technique I should paint it, I am pleased to say with a lot of layering, and hits of highlights and shadows here and there definitely helped! I am always pleased how temperate makes the painting instead of the actual darkness and lightness. I definitely learned that, which is evident in my shadows and highlights from the start of class to the end. I am very pleased with the final painting even though I want to hit in once more to doctor it a little.

I do want to note that the photos are edited accurately. I really did paint the plate a gold and the vase a green. However, in the end, the colors were totally different! 

painted December 2012. Intro to Painting: Still Life. Fall 2012. UMD.