Thursday, March 6, 2014

"Six Quail Eggs" It's All About the Negative Space:

  
"Six Quail Eggs"
12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

Yes, I've been painting! But I've been away from the blog, and I've missed you! I do apologize, things have been up and down. "In sickness and in health," as they said when I married this blog. 

 Somehow, I managed to work on this painting for two weeks, but kept the freshness of the brushwork on the painted-over canvas- it was one of the first parts of the painting I blocked in, as you can see below, and I left it completely alone. 

The negative space in this painting is the subject. I wanted to emphasize the smallness of the quail eggs, and the little speckled dish they're in. So I used my usual array of colored papers, but also that half-painted canvas, because I live in an art studio, and there's a lot of that around. Kind of my way of self-portraitizing an otherwise normal still life.

 (As always, click the picture for a bigger view.)