Paul Cezanne” Still Life with AppleS and Oranges”

When I was doing my research I concentrated on paintings by Paul Cezanne. The paintings are done in oil paint in the later life of Paul Cezanne. The painter mostly painted apples and oranges and created various different compositions. I will only focus on one ‘Still life with Apples and Orange’, in this painting the thing you notice first is the perspective. All the lines meet in a central point and create parallel planes. This painting interested me as while doing my coursework I was painting mostly apples and oranges and this painting have a very effective composition. There is a white cloth in the centre on which the fruits lay and some are in dishes which are also on the cloth. The background is a multi-coloured chair. This sort of composition in which the chair is in the background really intrigued me. Creating a composition for my still life was very hard and so inspiration can be taken from the composition of the painting for my own purposes. Cezanne’s painting is mostly a study of colour and shape. The cloth itself has many shapes within it and strongly geometric, it is shown in real three dimensions and the contrasts to the cloth are also the geometrical fruits. The fruits have a very spherical character which draws in our attention. The dishes have a regular shape and in a way this neutralises the geometric character of the piece. This type of painting really attracts our attention. The composition is static but has a very emotional and expressional meaning which was characteristic of the expressional painters. On the other had the geometrical shapes in this paintings is the announcement of a new type of art ‘cubism’ whose main representatives were Picasso and Braque. I really like this type of art. The compositions of Barque are phenomenal but cubism throws out colour and instead uses mostly monochromatic colours. Cubims uses a completely different language to portray things, often the objects are flat with geometric shapes and the compositions are in a different plane but we can still make out what the objects are. At the moment I think I can only look at these paintings and admire them but I do not see how I can use this sort of technique in my watercolours. http://www.paulcezanne.org/still-life-with-apples-and-oranges.jsp

PART 2 PAINTING FROM OBSERVATION

Project 1 Drawing and Watercolour

Exercise: Quick watercolour study

In this exercise you asked me to do a few quick watercolours studies by just looking and painting. I started off by looking at one corner of my living room in which there is a table on which I placed some apples a jug and a lamp. I kept doing closer fragments of the scene not always sticking to the colours of the object as I didn’t just want to show colour but tone. This is particularly seen in painting number 5 were the colour of the lamp is very different but the tone is still the same.

    

Exercise: Pencil and Watercolour

For this I set up a simple still life of plates and cutlery. For the first painting I followed the guidelines of the drawing I first made and filled the different shapes with colour but did not colour outside the lines. The second painting has the same set up but I did not strictly follow the guidelines of my drawing and I liked this more as it gave me more freedom. The first painting I had to do really carefully and maybe if the drawing was done in a different media such as a marker or ink I would have acted differently. In both paintings I was limited by the drawing with my expression and it did not let me use my intuition of observation. I do not think this exercise was successful and I think the key to this being a good painting is the analysis and a good drawing but for me the drawing limits my thinking in the moment.

 

Exercise: Adding line to watercolour

This exercise was very tricky because I had to think for a long time about how to use lines in my work so I decided to paint two paintings. The first painting is a sofa with pillows and a blanket. I thought this was a good place to start with as the sofa and pillows have quite geometric shapes which benefited from the added lines making their shape more clear. In the second painting I changed my viewpoint slightly still including the sofa and pillows but now also looking at the lamp next to the sofa. For the lines I used black crayon.

 

Project 2 Light and Tone

Exercise: From light to dark the watercolour way

In this exercise I used two shades of blue and two shades of green to see how I can achieve light to dark tones with layers. For the light blue seen second I think I started off with too much paint and not enough water. I think this exercise was very useful and I think I should do this with every colour that I use so I can use it as a guideline while painting.

Exercise: Tone from a single layer

In my sketchbook I did some preparation drawing and I marked which points are the lightest and which are the darkest. Then I tried to recreate this using watercolour. I have done this exercise twice as I was not happy with the first result. While doing this exercise I made a mistake as I didn’t only look at the picture I made in my sketchbook but also the still life in front of me. The still life I did was not the best choice as the metal reflected light so the light kept changing and there were so many shadows that could be seen that it was not possible to do them with a single layer of paint.

 

Exercise: Tone in several layers

In this exercise I was more confident. I changed the composition of the objects from the previous exercise. I was more familiar with the colour. The ability to do more than one layer gave more possibilities. I did one painting in the same colour as the previous exercise and then on an A3 format did a painting in green. I think using this method I created a better effect than in the previous exercise.

 

Project 3 Tone and Composition

Exercise: Composition of an interior

On an A4 format I painted a simple chair and a fragment of a table with a light and dark wall in the background. This work was a continuation of the previous exercise because I used several layers to build the colour. My intention was to show the lightest and darkest area of the scene and check how the method works. After doing this I started to look for areas in my home with contrasting shades but I couldn’t find anything but I found a picture in my photo album of the apartment from my holiday. I did the painting of the picture in a red colour. I tried to keep the work very fresh and I did it quite quickly not looking too much for detail but concentrated on the tones of the picture.

 

Exercise: Dramatic Interior

In the first painting I did looked from a dark room into the kitchen which was illuminated by one light source above the kitchen table. In the second painting I lit up the room I was painting from and I saw some light going into the kitchen, I left the light above the table lit but this time the light above the table was not noticed as much as in the previous painting. The table was at the end of the kitchen and the middle of the kitchen was in shade in both paintings. Looking from a light room you see the light in the kitchen differently than when you look from a dark room. I did another two paintings with the bathroom one where the bathroom was lit and the other where the bathroom was dark. I did not concentrate on the details of the bathroom but more the shades.

 

 

Exercise: Imaginary room

I started this exercise from a simple view out of a door onto a staircase. This was a view from my memory and I tried to recreate this. I did this twice on an A4 and A3 format in red. Then I did three paintings in blue that were completely imaginary. I tried to build the perspective using different kinds of shadow. In the blue works I did not feel limited; the only limit was my ability to paint using watercolour. I tried to create an atmosphere in the work and I think using monochrome colours you can do this when painting interiors. I think the important thing is what you want to show, be it atmosphere or mood, and not only do a copy of what you see. Comparing this exercise to the previous I think for both it is necessary to use a little imagination and proper natural construction. Especially in the imaginary room you need to use some natural form.

 

  

Project 4: Colour

Exercise: Still Life with colourful objects

For this exercise, I set up apples, oranges, red onions and a grapefruit on my red footrest and it is half covered with a kitchen cloth. I tried to pick out the fruits and vegetables so that they were different shapes but similar in colour. The pattern on the kitchen cloth was similar in colour to the footrest, as well as the apples. The grapefruit was yellow but a different shade to the lemons. The onions were light brown, and another was purple. I did some sketches preparation in my sketchbook and I did simply studied colour. Next, I painted the final work. I wasn’t too accurate with the colours but I wanted to show them in various shades and temperatures whilst also trying to make a connection with the background. When I finished it, I thought that I made the final work less contrasting to the background but I also pay too much attention to the detail and overlooking previous work was more colourful with more freshness.

 

Exercise 2: Working with greys and browns

In this exercise I did a small colour study and after, I painted on A3. I painted a chair, with a wicker basket. On the backrest was a white towel. In the background were some light stones from the fireplace. I did that work wet on dry, and sometimes I dampened some parts of the painting. I tried to avoid using black colours, but I did some black marks by mistake, unfortunately. The black in that picture was very strong and I couldn’t control. Surprisingly Raw Umber- my darkest brown colour worked very well. After diluting it in water, it worked like oil and I could put so many layers in the same part and the colour only changed a tiny bit. It gave me so much control with that pigment. In some areas, I tried to mix white with dark colours to make some grey. It wasn’t very easy for me. I don’t think I did that exercise very well, only I think I learned a lot from that exercise. I need to try to work with more black sometime.

 

Exercise: Warm and cold colours

For this exercise, it asked me to do 6 postcard sized little pictures. I painted a couple of simple objects. I think I did better from imagination, or it felt more fun doing it this way, for example my toy gun from my childhood, and my sleigh and a mushroom. I tried to work with different colours- contrasting cold with warm and vice versa. What I learned from this exercise, was whilst doing this simple exercise, you can learn a lot how each colour affects another, how using a colour makes a temperature in the picture and also using imagination to create a certain colour that’s not necessary one that we observe but one we can formulate in our minds.  I am quite happy with the ketchup bottle and sleigh but in this case, there are different temperatures of the colour, but in another way they remain corresponding.