Painting: In This Together, in progress

Scroll down to watch the work develop.

As I began, I decided that I didn't like the yellow tone of the wood beneath my still life. So I put grey velvet under it, to make the red and yellow colors more vibrant-looking in the finished piece.

 I started by drawing my arrangement with a brush with a thin wash of green. I chose green because it would help balance the intense red of the tomatoes; this is the same reason I use a red iron oxide wash under my primarily-green landscape paintings.

The green I used for the drawing/wash is viridian with quinacridone gold added to warm it up some.

 I then mixed some greys. Even the white teacup is, from a painting standpoint, primarily grey. The background and table will be greys with varying shades of green, pink, and violet -- and some reflected hints of yellow and red from the fruit. Above, you can see where I was beginning to block in my green-grey backdrop.

And here's how things looked at the point when I went for sushi tonight. Still quite unfinished but starting to feel solidly three-dimensional.

About the colors: every red you see was mixed with some green to render it more natural (my camera, unfortunately, oversaturates reds so that subtlety is lost). The shadows on the tomatoes are done by blending dark green into my red paint; the shadow on the lemon is done by adding cobalt violet to my yellow.

Anyone who wants to know exactly which pigments I am using for which parts is welcome to ask in the comments here. I love talking about what I'm doing, and this, for me, is a bit of an experiment. For one thing, I'm not in the habit of using grey this way. I like it a lot so far, though.

Look for more updates tomorrow!