Stage 1: Bowl of Fruit

Again, what should have taken only a few minutes to complete took a bit over an hour...

I drew in the outline of the main shapes with a sienna wash and blended the background colors. I'm using green again only because I'm going to be using blue, orange and red for the can label and the colors there should be nice and intense. The steel ends of the can will be shades of blueish-black to white and the bowl will be cream tones with touches of brick red, brown and low value yellow (see photo). I'll try to shade the bowl with warm hues, thus the choice of green colder hues for the background as a compliment. Once again, like the green apples, the actual background is too bland and monochrome to paint as is. (It's directly under a table lamp using a 60W compact fluorescent bulb on my cream-colored wall cabinet against a white wall.)

Frowned on in many still lifes, the background lacks any defined edge of either the horizontal surface top or the background wall. I left it that way purposely since the subject is framed so "up close" I felt a busier background would only detract from it. My plan is to have that can "pop" with its heightened perspective and flashy colors.

"Pop" is a good term to use since, although it'll be painted in a realist style, it's a slight homage to my all-time idol, Andy Warhol.

By the way, I chose to hold off until tomorrow morning because I know there will be some tough challenges. "Huh? What challenges?" you say, making a sarcastic smirk and looking at me all askew. "It's just a cylinder in a bowl...very basic shapes, c'mon!" Well you're right about that, and that should not be a problem.

It'll be the lettering on the label!

That's right, think about it. When's the last time you saw a painting that got lettering in a realistic painting right? It always looks drawn on. It's hard because even though you're painting what amounts to shapes, the viewer's brain is interpreting those shapes not as shapes, but as letters. And it's trying to read them.

In many paintings where the artist is not concerned with the actual content of the words portrayed, say like in a street sign or a newspaper or something in their picture to be treated as just another shape, legibility is not a concern and in fact, when the artist depicts lettering as part of an object and it looks good, it's often times almost, if not totally, illegible. But in my painting, since the impact of the intended spoof would be diminished if the viewer was unclear as to what the can contained, I've gotta let them know it's fruit cocktail! And in the confines of a 10 x 10 canvas! Yikes!