Medium/Support/Size
I used colored wax and I painted on cardstock and the finish picture is 4 inches wide and 5 inches high.
My Thoughts About This Challenge
I wanted to try to do a still life as I usually do abstract. However it turned out more abstract, but that's okay. I still like it.
I saw this challenge in the About.com Painting page. And I want to do more art so want to try each challenge that is presented.
I had a woodburned boarder around the tree branch, but it was not wide enough so I changed it by cutting down the picture and making the tree branch and fruit more centered. However when I sized it for this challenge I had to cut off some of the leaves that I had put on it. But I believe it still looks good for first try of doing this kind of style.
I looked forward to doing this challenge and knew right off what type of medium I was going to use. I wanted to use my woodburning tool so chose to do the challenge in wax instead of gouache.
I drew with pencil the shape of the figures first, but when working with wax it doesn't always come out the same way you draw it. I used a small quilting iron (used to iron seams down) and laid the hot iron on the colored wax until I thought I had the right amount of wax. When I first laid down the iron it spread a little more than wanted but was able to shape everything but the one leaf under the plum. I decided for that leaf that I would leave it big.
I used two different colors of green to try to get the shading of the leaves. I used yellow and peach color for fruit. Then I took plain beeswax and filled in all the white parts showing. When everything dried I began rubbing down the picture with a piece of paper towel. Doing this it showed up other features in the wax. Then I chose to use a light blue for background. And then rubbed it again.
Lessons Learned
- I learned that I still not able to paint an actually picture with objects. Abstract is what I normally do.
- I think this came out more real looking than most of my art work.
- The challenge I had with painting this picture is that I used wax.
- If I had to do it again I would make sure everything was colored fully as I see when blown up on computer that have some white spots on fruit.
- Also would practice more on using the iron and shaping a little better the figures.
