Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Olives With Pimento



( This painting is still available, click this link to go to the auction page)

One of the benefits of painting food is that you get to eat your subject matter when you're done. But I have to admit that it's a challenge to paint a jar of olives without opening it up and popping one in your mouth! Normally, I like the olives that are stuffed with garlic but I thought pimento would be good for a change.

Painting metal objects and glass is something that I enjoy, there's a challenge in creating the illusion of transparent and reflective surfaces. The lid is probably my favorite part of the painting. I like the thin line on top of the lid because it creates the illusion of light reflecting off of it.

I created this line with the point on the end of the wood handle of my brush. A few of my brushes have wood handles that come to a sharp point. These are great for scratching into wet paint to reveal the white canvas beneath it. I also use this technique to draw the shapes in the wet paint instead of using a pencil.

"Olives With Pimento"
Acrylic on canvas board
8"x10"


I struggled a little bit with the glass reflection and the highlights of the olives. That's because I invented the colors in the background and table. Inventing color schemes is fun, but it also makes it challenging when trying to figure out what the other colors should be. Since the background is such a warm color, that warmth also needs to be in the rest of the objects.

This painting also has a lot of warm colors. Even the olives are a warm green because it has a lot of yellow in it. The little bits of red pimento are nice touch against the olive green.

You can watch me paint this from start to finish in the video at the top of the post.

Lately, I've been painting with Golden OPEN acrylics but in a more photo realistic style. In this painting, I took a more expressionistic approach. I allowed more of the brushstrokes to show, especially in the background.

I find that this approach to painting is more fun than rendering a lot of detail, and it's also allows me to be more creative.

The OPEN acrylics take a lot longer to dry than regular acrylics. Regular acrylics begin to dry almost as soon as you put them down. In comparison, these OPEN acrylics are often still wet the following day. This gives me more time to soften edges and to blend colors.

If you watch the video, you may notice that I use a rag to remove some of the Burnt Sienna to create the highlights. This is a technique that I used to use with oil paints when I was in college. This technique normally isn't possible with acrylics, but these slow drying acrylics allow me to incorporate this technique into my acrylic paintings.

I should note that these olives didn't survive much longer than a week. They go well with tofu sandwiches on whole wheat, topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, dried oregano and fresh basil. This post is making me hungry!


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