I started this exercise by making some still life sketches in my sketchbook using charcoal, ink and wash and also using an 8b woodless pencil. I struggle to know what makes a good composition so I made quite a lot of thumbnail sketches. I wanted to include a wide range of tonal values but also to make quite a simple composition without losing visual interest or impact.
I was first attracted to the rich dark but reflective surface of an aubergine which I thought would make a good area of darkness. However, my composition of vegetables lacked any variation in height. I experimented with propping up a pepper for height and also with a light coloured jug, the handle of which made some good negative shapes against the dark background. However, I found the shape of the jug a bit squat and in the end I decided to go with a very simple arrangement with three elements (eliminating the aubergine altogether), - a largish beer bottle, a yellow pepper and a group of two onions. I had sketched this image while sitting on the floor with the objects on a low (white) picnic table and I liked the perspective this gave me. I also liked the diagonal of the foreground onion leading the eye towards the other two elements and the shapes made between the bottle and the shadows of the onions.
I didn't find the instructions for this exercise completely clear as to whether I was meant to do a light and a dark ground or a white and a mid-toned ground so I elected to do three studies instead. One on a white ground, one on a mid toned ground and one on a dark ground.
Exercise: Tonal Study on a White Ground
I had received the alternative solvents that I had ordered so I decided to attempt this exercise in oils. The first sketch was on a white ground using a combination of prussian blue and raw umber. This was my first attempt at a representational oil painting so my approach was a bit panicky - I think you can see the results of this nervous energy in the end result. I didn't organise my palette at all because I didn't think this was necessary using only the two colours and white so I ended up with random blobs of different colours and tonal values all over the place on the palette and some of the tones ended up being a sort of dull putty colour. However, for a first attempt the results weren't quite as bas as I'd expected. I had managed to create a sense of volume in the subjects and also an idea of the reflective but dark surface of the bottle. The white of the paper gives a glowing light tone.
The good news was that using Gamblin Gamsol (an odourless type of mineral spirit) as a substitute for the turpentine, I hadn't developed a solvent headache.
Tonal Study on a Mid Ground
It was only during this painting that I realised that both of the colours I had chosen were cold colours. I had meant to choose a warm earth tone to combine with the prussian blue. In my mind, raw umber sounder warmer to me than burnt umber (burnt sounds like ash or charcoal so darker and greyer or cooler). Unfortunately - it appears it is the other way around and burnt umber would have been a warmer choice. However, I quite like the atmosphere that the cool palette brings to these studies. It reminds me of old-fashioned sepia -toned photographs.
In the second study I mixed a mid tone which was mainly raw umber with a very small amount of prussian blue and this was used for a wash to create the mid-toned ground.
I made a note of the proportions of umber to blue used so that I could re-create this colour to paint with once the wash was dry. On my palette I then mixed a range of tonal values by combining this with variable amounts of titanium white. I mixed larger amounts of prussian blue with the base colour to create the darker tones - this meant that I could paint in either direction tonally from my base colour. I felt a bit less panicky when painting this second version as I was familiar with the set-up and I had organised myself better.
I had started to enjoy manipulating the paint on the paper. I started out by squinting an placing the very darkest and the very lightest tonal values and build the forms from there, This seemed to be easier on the mid-toned ground especially as I had pre-mixed a tonal range. I found it was possible to overlay and work different tonal areas into each other on directly on the paper because the oil paint was slow to dry allowing gradual tonal changes to be made. I especially liked the marks made by scraping the light tome over the mid ground with a dryish brush in the lower right hand corner.
I enjoyed the process of painting this study the most of the three. Looking at it though, I wonder whether being more organised has reduced the energy of the study produced compared to the first attempt
For the third study I painted on a dark background made for a combination of mainly prussian blue combined with a small amount of raw umber. I used this base colour for the darks values and used mainly raw umber for the mid tones with the base colour mixed with titanium white. This was more rapidly executed than the second study (I was getting a bit bored with the subject by now). I found it quite difficult to get a really light tone to cover the background especially in the lower left corner of the study.
I like the richness of the deep tones on the bottle and the contrast with the bright reflections on its neck. I also like some of the visible brush marks on the onions. Less successful in the pepper which looks very flat and sharp-edged - I haven't really conveyed the three dimensionality of this form very well. The bottle is also a bit broader and squatter than it was in reality - it's starting to look more like a milk bottle than a beer bottle.
I photographed each of these studies in black and white and placed them side-by-side here for comparison. It illustrates that the drawing is far from perfect with quite a lot of variation between the painting on the shape of the bottle in particular - but I think this is probably less important than the comparison of the tonal values. Overall I don't think the comparative tonal ranges are too different. There is certainly a greater tendency towards the lighter tones when painting on the white background and the tonal values especially on the pepper are generally darker on the the dark ground. I found controlling the tonal rages and unifying everything easiest on the mid toned ground.
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