I really enjoyed the last painting of the Loaf & Jug but feel I need to produce my own original image and composition. I also feel the ‘classic still life’ is a legitimate route but not one I want to really focus on. I felt it lacked spontaneity and did not really reflect a contemporary route.

I really wanted a warm and even humorous picture that was light and used softer tones. The other idea was to move away from the detailed approach to a more loose style, using different brush strokes. Also I had the idea of a painting for a kitchen/diner.

So I set up a breakfast scene, with a freshly boiled egg, (smooth texture, soft colours), toast (rough & warm), salt cellar (transparent & metal), butter (warm & cold??) & honey jar (nice oval shape) all on a tea towel. The composition idea was to move in close, the edges cutting every object and working towards a circular shape. With every object pointing to the next. Pushing the eye around in a circular motion.

Enough talk, here is the finished result. (salt cellar is darker on the original but the shine from the paint is softening it)

I’ve been thinking about painting a still life in oils for a while. I’ve only tried them in watercolour until now and I wanted to see if I could get a decent representation of the subject in this medium.

Finding a subject that is emotive and balanced is hard. I should have set up the subject myself but my photography is awful and I wanted to paint something I liked. The image keeps to a range of  warm colours, is a classic composition and is fairly straight forward to paint.

Here is the painting. My next attempt will be from a composition of my own.

Loaf & Jug with Walnut

Below is a painting from our recent holiday to Vietnam. I’ve included the source photo for interest. Its of the Old Quarter in Hanoi, a very vibrant and fascinating part of the city. There should be more traffic but for some reason the street cleared when I took the photo, so I’ve added a couple of bikes. One of the features of Vietnamese towns are the power cables running everywhere, so this has become a main feature of the picture.