I decided to write a little about the process I go through in creating a painting: from the idea to the final piece, and having photo's created for the website and Social Media. Here it is.

Over the winter I’ve been busily beavering away in the studio and the New Year heralded the beginning of some new concepts for my paintings.

I love working on still life paintings, however, up to quite recently these have mostly been for my own amusement or for friends.

This year I decided to expand the offerings of my ‘Original Oil Paintings’ website to include still life paintings.

The first ‘concept set’ hinges around the idea of ‘The Kitchen’. What might look good hanging in a kitchen? What is usually knocking around in the kitchen that might be worth highlighting?

I chose the idea of creating four individual still life paintings in oil, for this set, using boards instead of canvas.

This would give me an excellent ground support and enable me to create something of a specific size that could be ‘scaled’ if I wanted to.

The still life subjects I chose were utensils and drinks.

Simple huh?

Not quite. I wandered into a very interesting realm of people’s personal tastes, cultural norms, canons of style, as well as straight forward (or not) subjective and objective debate.

In addition to choosing my objects, I decided to go for a severe ‘chiaroscuro’ effect and make them ‘moody’, using the strong definitions of light and dark this style would give me.

The four paintings became…..

Pepper Grinder with Onions and Red Pepper.

Garlic Bunch with Crusher and Opinel Knife.

A Pleasant Lunch, Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Brie.

And…..

A Wee Dram……. Self explanatory really.

Setting up... Ideas taking shape

A look behind the scenes.

Assembling the objects and creating the light and dark.

I decided to go with a very limited palette for these paintings.

You have to begin somewhere.

The Pepper Grinder is a French Peugeot grinder that we’ve had in the kitchen for some years. I thought they only made cars but there you go. I really wanted to use it because of the chrome grinder arm and base which are both highly reflective.

The body is black and would make a fascinating challenge to create against the dark background. The red pepper would leap out from the dark with its shiny skin and the wooden table and onions would give a gentle reprieve to the dark and light.

The Garlic Bunch had been hanging next to the old bread oven in the kitchen, and looked amazing with violet colours against the almost white of the dry skin of the cloves and husk. The Opinel knife was an obvious French addition and the crusher with its metal head and black handles would give me another challenge to tackle.

‘A Pleasant Lunch’ was inspired by a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that was sitting next to the wine rack. The colours of its label and the glinting light around the mouldings of the bottle got me thinking. I matched it with a shiny cork screw, some Waterford crystal wine glasses, a packet of Brie on a mini cheese board and the ubiquitous Opinel knife.

With ‘A Wee Dram’ I simply grabbed a dram glass, added my favourite single malt and stood it next to a shiny cocktail jigger and stood a dull terracotta water jug behind to give me some relief from the shininess of the dram glass, jigger and single malt.

The key challenge with these pieces in their creation was handling of the ‘values’ and they all presented me with their individual tests.

I went with a very limited palette in order to contain my values as well as concentrate and marry the hues.

As you can see in the image above the colours are very uniform with the essential focus being on value; harmonising the lights and dark tones as I painted. The wooden boards I used as supports gave me a really unrefined but sensory support on which to lay my oil paints.

The painting of these was deliberately challenging. The framing, I didn’t think, would be a problem………….

So, once I had finished the pieces, it was on to framing.

This sent another curve ball my way.

I like the darks and had deliberately chosen this style to accentuate that fact. I love the chosen objects leaping out of the dark.

Obviously dark frames would be the right choice? No. ‘I’ know I’m going for the chiaroscuro effect, however, not everyone is familiar with this style and, to modern eyes, it may appear too severe, too gloomy, too sombre.

Darn it!

That hadn’t occurred to me in creating these pieces so I decided to throw the subject open and get some feed back on my Facebook Pages.

I asked folks on Facebook what they preferred.

Some knew the effect I was after and agreed with dark frames. Others simply thought of the decor on which they might hang the piece, and plumped for the light frames.

In the end I decided to offer the paintings in a choice of light or dark frame.

Light frame or dark frame? Hmm.........

So that was the painting and framing sorted. Now I just had to get them photographed for my websites and ready to show on other online platforms.

Well, what a nightmare. My talent in photography definitely ran out long before the capabilities of my photographic equipment, and try as I might, the challenge of exposure and surface reveal was just too much for my meagre talents.

I was lucky enough, in the end, to track down an amazing photographer in Bideford who was able to handle the painting's needs and get me the shots I wanted.

I will have the paintings up on my ‘Original Oils’ website soon after this Blog is published at the beginning of April.

So, if you like the paintings, you can choose to have them in either light of dark frames, and if you go for the set; maybe even mix it up. It’s up to you.

I hope you are subscribed to the blog, however, if you aren't, please do so and you will be notified when the new paintings are added to the website for sale.

For now, those are done and I’m busy selecting new subjects for future still life paintings and at the same time chomping at the bit to get out and about and paint some views en plein air.

See you around.

Speak soon,

Chris.