Blue vase - still life in oil

Over the last few weeks, I've been visiting op-shops and garage sales and picking up interesting odds and ends for use in still life paintings.

This blue vase was one of the things I collected. It is a very dark, yet intense blue with a gold and silver foil pattern on one side. The small cream-coloured ceramic pot is one I picked up at an op-shop years ago. The flowers are synthetic, but if you don't tell anyone, then I won't mention it either.

Blue vase

25x30cm oil on board. 

 © Andy Dolphin

I almost never do still life paintings but I want 2014 to be the year where that changes. This painting is the first step in that journey. I started it at 8pm yesterday when the mood suddenly hit, and I was done by 10pm, with a short break half-way through. I had already set it up the day before.

I don't consider it finished but I'm happy with the overall feeling of it as a "proof of concept".

The palette is quite limited: ultramarine, permanent crimson, cad-yellow light, yellow ochre and burnt sienna.

The lighting for this was supplied by an old domestic compact fluorescent globe but I got a new full-spectrum compact fluoro yesterday that I hope to use in future.

400-Day Clock Digital Still Life

I was playing around this afternoon trying to assemble an interesting still life setup using one of our recently-acquired dome clocks.

I don't have a lot of useful ornaments or bric-a-brac to populate a still life, and February is a dreadful time to go looking for colour around the garden, but I did find a petunia that was still holding onto some flowers. Using the still-life stand I built last month, I added a few small vases and even some lemons and got to work arranging.

I spent hours trying different arrangements and lighting, taking photos as I went. With no time left to start an oil painting, I did this digital painting of a close-up of the clock pendulum.

400-day dome clock pendulum
Digital painting

© 2014, Andy Dolphin