Monday, September 9, 2013

Still Life Ice Tea and Lemon

Ice Tea and Lemon 5"x7" oil

I painted this during one of the the heat waves we had this year, I found it in one of the drying racks which are just dish racks, but work perfectly for keeping wet paintings separated. I have one rack for small paintings 5x7 to 8x10 and another for larger paintings 11x14 and up.

This started out as a practice piece to see if I could capture the barely recognizable tea bags sitting in the ice tea, then I became interested in the shadow and reflected light from the tea. I think I painted the lemon 3 or 4 times before it looked like a lemon.

The reason I found it is I periodically go thru paintings after they have been out of sight for a while and when I see them with fresh eyes the mistakes seem to stand out. I'll try to repaint them, if that doesn't work they get the gesso treatment. The paintings not good enough get coats of grey gesso made by mixing some black with the gesso, now I have panels ready for outdoor sketching, these plein air sketches  capture the essence of the scene when painting on location. Recycling the panels like this also  helps save money on buying panels for sketching.

3 comments:

Jane said...

Hi Pat. What a great idea to use a dish rack for the paintings to dry , an idea I will steal immediately ! I think you succeeded perfectly in capturing what you wanted to capture here, a painting with very tranquil colors and mood. Wish you a nice weekend.

Kev's Art said...

I really like the colours in this one Pat, you've got some nice glow in the shadow on the right. That gorgeous yellow in the lemon provides great contrast and gives the whole image a kick. I like this painting very much so please, keep the Gesso well away from this!!!

mary maxam said...

I have been thinking of painting and making sun tea and this hits the spot! Love the rich sienna and little slice of yellow.