Blog

I had the privilege of being in Austin, TX this week to work in person with a very talented artist and teacher, Mark Carder. I have been working with Mark via Zoom for the last fifteen months and he has been instrumental in my learning how to draw in proportion, mix colors precisely and paint what I see. Given I have been painting from photos since I began this journey in the Spring of 2020, I was ready for a new challenge. It was time to paint from life!

The creation of this painting included several steps. First, I spent ~three hours selecting items to include in my still life and adjusting the lighting in the shadow box in which it was being curated. It was no easy task, as I could not rest until I had a compelling scene that inspired me to paint. The next step was to draw my still life on the canvas, in free hand, while maintaining proportion. To do this, each item must be drawn relative to another, in scale and according to the size of the canvas. In this case, it took ~five hours to capture the essential elements of this still life in preparation for painting. At last it was time to mix my colors and paint! Finally, after twenty-four hours of effort, the painting you see here had emerged.

Interestingly, while doing some art research, I learned there was a technique developed during the renaissance period that was described as "chiaroscuro." Chiaroscuro refers to the use of exaggerated light contrasts in order to create the illusion of volume. In this painting you can see the contrasts between light and dark and sense the drama that comes from the use of exaggerated light. Note the bottle in the background is hardly visible, yet contributes to the illusion of volume and depth on an otherwise two dimensional canvas. I knew in that moment I had found the perfect name for this painting: Renaissance Art!