Session #19 - Pears

Pears and apples are of the most studied fruits by the artists: at some point in our learning path we all meet them! And again, every single painting is different. Difference is something that I encourage our group to aim for: after a few common ground directions about how to correctly draw the objects, about how to attempt paint the cloth behind the fruits and how to lay the washes to keep the light, I propose each lady to work with different colors, to find her own path. And, as you can see from the samples bellow, each painting in the end is a wonderful surprise - I am sure you would love to have them hangging on your walls (their children and grandchildren have started to ask them for custom orders!)!

Sessions #16, #17 and #18 - Drawing and painting from real life

I think one of the basic skills that a painter needs, no matter the medium, is drawing from real life. The easiest way to start with is to set up a simple still life, and try to decompose the objects in simple geometric shapes, such as sphere, cone, cube, cylinder, etc.
Having in mind not only to improve the drawing skills, but also to start look for light and shade to real object and try to render it in a painting, we choose a few simple things (pears and peppers) and added some more complex (glass bottle and sea shells) for more advanced drawing.

Moving around the setup to capture different compositions, and going close or far from the table were among the exercises we did in the first week:

Next week we combined the drawing with some work on the roses for the ones that missed some previous sessions:

Then, we practiced light with monochrome studies, and our paintings started to get some shape:

More work to do next week to finish the paintings, and move to other objects.