Gala Basket

My inspiration is often a visual one as it was with this basket of gala apples. I brought it in for my intermediate class to paint and was so attracted to it that I knew I had to paint it. Then as soon as I got home I immediately started photographing it. I must say that I am not the best photographer in the world but the more pictures that you take the more you have to choose from. As soon as I saw the photo I knew it was the right one.

I blew up the photo to fit on my paper which was 12 x 16 and transferred the outline onto the paper.

I then layed an underlying wash of very light new gamboge over the entire painting. Unfortunately you can hardly see this wash in the photo. I often do this when starting a painting. I feel as if this ties the painting together right from the beginning.

Then I started working on the apples themselves. I painted them wet on wet and I layed down clear water first and then dropped my aurelin yellow and a touch of thalo yellow green as well as new gamboge into the individual apples. Then while still wet I began dropping in my reds. I used scarlet red, quinacridone red and alizron crimson. At this phase I was just playing with the colors as I knew that they would all be covered up with later layers.

While painting this painting I was a little obsessed with it. (For lack of a better word.) I had been working on another painting and I pushed it out of the way. I worked on it every chance that I had. I also went in to look at it and think about what I needed to do next, what I liked about it and what I wanted to improve on. It was like I lived the painting. I do not get this way about all of my paintings but I wish that I did!