Lemons & Folds {a daily painting}

Lemons and Folds – 5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8 cm) – Oil Canvas Panel

Over the last two weeks I have worked and reworked the lemons in certain paintings. This is because I sometimes get hung up on the subtleties of the colors in the shadows, is the shadow really that green or purple, or a compilation of the two, or maybe something totally different. So today’s painting is also lemons as I continue to work on discerning these slight changes in color and value.

Before completing this painting and the previous one I did some 10 minute studies of each setup on some gessoed watercolor paper. I got this idea from Carol Marine’s blog where she had her recent workshop students complete various 10 minute sketches. Working with a timer really gets the blood pumping and enhances focus. Once I got down to painting the real painting I felt familiar with the subject and had some experience exploring some different variations of how to apply the paint and accomplish what I wanted to.

Lately I have been using cremnitz white more often than the other whites on my palette, titanium white and zinc buff white. So for the drapery folds I decided to only use titanium white and to play with its fluidity.

{10 minute studies}