Reflective

The first time I ever painted with oils was at a community education class offered through the local university. For our first still life, the instructor pulled out a shiny, hammered brass vase as part of the still life setup, and that thing drove me crazy! I couldn't get my brain to shut off so I could just just see the object as shapes, colors and values. In the end, I wasn't very happy with the way that vase turned out. The values and colors were all wrong, and it certainly looked nothing like a brass vase (and that strange piece of fruit behind the vase--what is that and why did I include it as part of my composition? Is it an orange? a peach? an awkwardly shaped handle? ;)

Anyway, I do like to push myself with challenging material, so I decided to pull out a couple of Christmas ornaments last night--shiny, highly reflective ones. These just about drove me crazy, too. I even started on paper, anticipating scrapping the whole thing if it just didn't work out. And as usual, what I created didn't match the vision in my head. There are some definite problems--like how did the red ornament end up larger than the gold ornament in the foreground? bad drawing. But at least I can tell they are ornaments. That's a definite improvement over that silly brass vase from a few years back. I might just give these another go another day, and see if I can't make that infuriating red ornament appear a little less flat :)

"Reflective"

5x7, oil on paper