Going Realistically Abstract

My attempt lately is to abstract my landscapes more. I feel it's important to be able to do them realistically before trying to go more abstract. Because then the abstraction is more informed and has the structure needed to give it strength. See what I did with the same scene twice:

Reflections on creating a still life

Three objects, a still life by Paul Creedon.

I think of still lifes and landscapes as being quite different in purpose and mood. 

(Digression: I drew plenty of human figures back in the day, and the day was about 25 years long, and now I just want to do other things. Nonetheless, the teachers were right in saying that drawing the figure is the best way to learn how to draw. It's true, I think, that if you can draw a person you can draw pretty much anything else. Michelangelo believed it. End of Digression.)

Lighting in a still life

Still lifes usually have one main source of illumination. The objects don't move, and the fascination seems to lie in recognizing everyday things like fruit and bottles and tables, presented in new and different situations. Sometimes I look at something I've owned for years, and I feel as if I never saw it until I painted it. 

The light reflects from say, an orange, onto a silver pitcher, and the pitcher becomes something brand new. But the light and the situation have to be constant, and the pitcher and orange have to be depicted realistically, because we have to recognize the them immediately. So I work in a tight manner, and use pastel pencils with occasional forays into the land of the big pastel stick (to get a splotch of pure color) to make the onlooker's eye go where you want it to. A lot of the work is done before hand, when setting up the objects in the scene, and the trick is to represent what is laying there quietly in front of me, pretending to behave itself. 

Of course there is another consideration. People like to go right up to a still life and look as closely as possible at the execution. I know I do. So the technique needs to hold up under inspection. 

To be continued.

Coloring outside the lines

Four Apples original pastel painting.

The first still life was framed and hung in the solo art show held last Fall. I had looked forward to seeing what it looked like up on the wall and was disappointed. It had been hung in the frame crooked because I had not colored in the part beneath the table edge all the way to the pencil guideline line I had drawn. Let this be a lesson to all: don't keep it between the lines. Let things bleed on past the borders a little. In other words, coloring outside the lines can be a good thing!

Second, as an in-law pointed out, the apples looked a bit like tomatoes. They were too shiny. You might say I was relieved it didn't sell so I could see if I could fix the problem. Later on the framer we use needed a favor involving taking the pastel out of its frame so he could use it in another project.

But then the apple/tomatoes still life was left on a shelf for a long time. I was sick and didn't quite know what to do with the picture anyway. 

A solution is found

Four Apples still life as it is now.

This week I sprayed fixative over the whole painting and drew a "new" version over the old one. This second edition is less colorful, (on purpose; maybe being ill affected my outlook on life?), and the apples were toned down, roughed up a bit, and simplified a little. Not too much, since the point was to have them look fairly realistic and a bit less like tomatoes! In any event, this is what it looks like now.* The picture was painted out to the edges and beyond, so when it gets reframed, the table edge should be level. I think it succeeds now as a pastel painting of apples. What do you think?

*When I was ten, my father had a very difficult time convincing me that tomatoes are not fruits, but rather are vegetables. I insisted that vegetables come in dull green and brown colors, and certainly not in cheery bright red. On the other hand, he pointed out that fruits taste good, and thus won the argument.