Laphroaig and Glass
10"x8" oil on canvas panel

What to paint in winter? Thinking about Valentine's Day coming up I got out a bottle of brandy and a couple of glasses. Hopefully you'll see that painting in a few days. I thought I should practice first and so grabbed a bottle of my favorite scotch, Laphroaig, and a single glass.

I set up the still life next to a window, with a black backdrop and a white linen napkin as the base. and took a few photos since the light was changing fast. Here are a few process shots.

Value under painting in yellow ochre and ultramarine blue

 Putting in the darks

First pass of color (note the change to a purple background)

Painting the background a different color than what I could see was of course not such a great idea. I  immediately knew that the bottom of the glass was now too dark. So the next morning I went to JoAnn Fabrics and bought a piece of purple fabric to replace the black.

Notice also that the bottle leans a little in the process photos and the ellipse at the top of the glass is crooked and bigger on the bottom then the top. So I had to fix all that. For a discussion of how to get the ellipse correct in this kind of painting, see this great post by my buddy Carol L. Douglas.

Sketch for "The Chefs", Noodler's ink and Creaper pen

The new year is about to start, and January is a good month for resolutions and for experimentation. If you've read my blog for a while, you know that I love drawing with pens. Pencils and charcoal are fine, but pens are my favorite. For the last few years I've been drawing with what we used to call "felt tip pens", but with permanent ink. My favorite of these is the Tombow, which are very reasonably priced, come in lots of colors, and a set of gray values. I stick to the gray values, and use them for thumbnail drawings and value sketches. Here are a couple of examples.

Gordes, France, sketch 2015

Olive Grove, Bedoin, France sketch 2015

And here are a few of the Tombow pens with another drawing.

Happy New Year!