Still life's are my jam but...

I absolutely love still life and my hope is that still life's are mostly what I produce for you but like any emerging artist I get easily distracted and at times can't say no to a bit of experimentation.

Inspired by Cezanne

The still life's of Paul Cezanne caught my eye many years ago when I had the privilege of visiting the Musee D'Orsay. I really like his paintings of fruit, bottles, baskets and tablecloths. I particularly like his ones with skulls. Something about the one with the skull and the fruit, the similarity in shapes made me think of the connection between life/fruit and death/skull. I even went so far as to buy a plastic life size halloween skull for future references. Stay posted - that skull will feature some time in my work. I love drawing them, great shadows. I also love Cezanne's colour palettes, the warmth and his compositions seem very balanced.

But I digress. In my endeavours to learn more about his still life painting I recently loaned three books from local libraries. Although I enjoyed learning about his still lifes, how his perspective was a little skewif at times, some apples and pears way larger than they actually should be; which I found quite encouraging. Does good art need to always be accurate? Also how his pieces looked as though you were both looking directly at it from a front view while simultaneously looking at it from above. I wonder if this happened perchance...did he stand up and sit down while he painted and this caused the different viewpoints to be combined into one?

Usurped by Cezanne's landscapes

But I continue to digress. What grabbed me in this book was some landscapes, in particular the discussion around his use of limited palettes. Which led me to a little experimentation of my own.

My daughter took a photo a while back of Noosa River which I have been meaning to paint. For the initial piece I used as many colours as I desired but then I challenged myself to limit to 3 colours and paint 2 more versions.

How did I chose my colours?

I picked a colour that was dominant from the original photo and then attempted to build a triad. Triads in colour theory are colours that are equidistant from each other on the colour wheel. I only have a limited palette of 14 gouache paints so I went with as close as I could find. After setting up to use only 3 colours I really struggled to be brave with such a limit and ending up adding blue to the second palette and yellow and white to the third.

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What this did to my brain was help me think differently about colour and how to blend them to achieve a similar image in the end. It was also fortuitous with the colours blending in all sort of ways on my palette allowing for things to take shape organically.

I became more considered as I worked on these, for example by the last one I bothered to paint the entire background in green and blue before working the details over the top. I think this worked better for making the river stand out as it is harding recognisable in the second one. I like the colour of the second one the best but not the execution. Funny thing is that with my still lifes I always block in the background first but for some reason my brain didn't seem to even think this might be a good idea for a landscape.

Although still life is what I want to be strong at, I also enjoy landscapes and time spent experimenting is never wasted. If you're an emerging artist like me and not sure if it is worth it, give it a go.