Setting up a still life in my studio

In  this December right after me moving in to my new place I decided in order to get better finally paint from life. And since I'm very, very shy person and in England and when it's winter - it's really bad idea to go out to paint so I made a decision to start small - to set up a basic still life in my apartment.

"what I want to paint?" I asked myself. As Richard Schmid advocates it should be something that excites you....

You wouldn't believe this but squashes excite me a lot - especially when I make a delicious meals out of them (my favourite is hokkaido squash pancake with some yogurt and strawberries on top) but that's maybe for a different kind of blog or maybe not - write my an enquiry and I'll send you an email with a recipe. My another precious thing in my life is a good coffee and I really dig my moka maker (it's a miraculous tool indeed!). So I gathered them all together and result is seen on the pictures below.

Few mistakes were made - I set up my first still life for a natural daylight which made me a person under a pressure - since I don't have northlight window, shades and lighting were moving so fast so it was kind of a hustle. And a second mistake was that I hadn't made myself a coffee before this sitting so it was twice as demanding to make a picture without a proper level of caffeine because my moka maker was in capture...

Anyhow you can see the result here:

Quicky! - light's coming!

It's been set up pretty quickly - I knew what I wanted - Squashed dance :-D

"Squashed dance around moka" (oil on canvas panel 6x8 inch)

Another tiger painting

Since I love wildlife kind of painting I'd decided before I moved out from my old place that I would try my first painting with tonal underpainting. Up till then I was used to work just with pencil drawings before I started with full rendering with oils.

This tonal approach is the basic and classic way to start a painting. It's a great way to guide your painting process because it includes an information about values (how dark or light things are) as well along with drawing of course. And it's more fun as well because you start with paint right away (in this case I used raw umber for underpainting).

Two major stages are shown down below. In reference picture there were two person behind the tiger and I found them quite disrupting in the composition so I had to edited a picture which effected a lightning of the scene. I hope that I somehow managed to keep the lightning believable....

tonal underpainting in the beginning stage (raw umber)

Final product called "Chill"

French stranger at the table

Sometimes when you're looking for a topic for your paper/canvas/board/forehead or whatever surface you don't seem to find something that would bring you towards that surface to begin putting some colours in it. 

I've been always fascinated with people and the expressions of theirs. Especially strangers whom you don't know and you quite have to guess what's their purpose in this world (is he/she father/mother, good businessman?, artist?, homeless? person who's recently survived a hard struggle?). One just wonders. And that's one of the reasons why I like to travel - I can see a different nature of people all around the globe (besides a nice landscape, buildings, beaches etc...)

back in August when I was in south France, Nice, Riviera of France with my friend, we went in one evening to have some delicious French wine. Right next to us was this person - A middle age man who had discussion with some lovely woman. Something in this guy was just striking. So I made a secret pictures from our table to have some reference shoots for my future use. And I've use it when I got back from my holiday to make this picture called "Will she give me any sugar?" That's what I thought he was most likely thinking (that woman was beautiful!) 

Some of my secret photoshoots (Yea sometimes you have to be like an agent -  but it pays of because the expressions of the people are more natural - storytelling right?). You can buy this work via link down below. 

Here's the final product on A4 watercolour paper painted with Gouache. 

 "Will she give me any sugar?" (Gouache on watercolour paper A4)

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/639227