In Transition

 Switching from a quilt making space and turning this into a painting studio was my goal for the day. I am showing the results first but the process of arriving here required finding everything again and putting away lots of quilting things. Not so difficult since everything seems to have a home now, thankfully. This set up does not have a finality to it, and I expect to tweek the arrangement several times as I get down to business. It has been a long time (a year!!) since I painted regularly and I had a myriad of reasons/excuses why, and now I must prove that all the fixes I insisted upon will contribute postitively to good painting results.

First I needed to make a shadow box. This is to create an environment for the still life objects to exist. This time I had a better than ever idea. Using the leftover styrofoam in the garage I cut large squares and taped and pinned them into a 90 degree angle. I already had a nice square for the bottom layer and a table to balance this box. It works pretty well, especially because  I can pin into the walls, using paper or fabric for a background. 

Then I draped the inside with a large piece of hand dyed cotton and set up some veggies for my subject.

I have lots of lights and tried several variations of light and bulbs before settling on this IKEA lamp. I am using a halogen bulb which is bright and white and hot.

I move the light around until I get the kind of shadows or highlights that form interesting shapes on the still life objects. Either one would work, it just depends on the mood I seek. The light also changes the color quite a bit and that may be the deciding factor of where the lamp is aimed.

To me shape, color and light are more important than subject. I have painted some strange things over the years because of this point of view.

Don't expect these tomatoes and pepper to be the subject matter of the first work I will do. They are stand-ins to test the setup.

This tomato was the first delicious tomato of the season. Topped with Genovese Basil from the front garden, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, the slices sat upon toasted and buttered whole wheat bread.

Drool, crunch, gone!