How I Made the Painting of Tomatoes with Daffs
This is the finished Painting – see the painting stages below
This Sequence describes stages with text and photos in painting a composition of Tomatoes with Daffs.
Inspiration for this painting came from a visit to a neighbour who had a hand-made bowl full of tomatoes on her kitchen table. Daffodils in our garden are early flowering, even through frosts, and their resilience is inspiring in daily life. Our bunch in a jug looked so perky they inspired me to paint.
The video is a collection of photographs taken between stages.
It struck me that it might be humerous to put the daffs and toms in one painting. Both are out of season here in February and the news was awash with warnings about fresh food and flower shortages in some supermarkets.
Sketching the idea in yellow ochre
The painting of a full bowl of tomatoes and a spray of daffs from the garden emerged from the idea and bright colours were the natural choice for an optimistic picture of plenty.
Lemon yellow mixed with white for the table surface and petals, a shadow for the bowl
I wanted to present a cheerful view of the season to remind us to be happy with our lot and appreciate everything in our own garden.
Ceruleum Blue mixed with white behind the daffs
Drawing shadows around the tomatoes
Although we have no tomatoes planted and they are out of season, the bowl is full.
Vermillion mixed with lemon yellow makes my tomatoes look like oranges!
The bowl is an unusual shape, with a wide rim and deeper than my drawing and the blue corrects it.
The ultramarine and white mix sets the red of the tomatoes and complements the pale yellow.
The painting needed depth so the table is thickly painted with obvious brush strokes making a texture. I mixed a glaze of yellow ochre for the foreground yellow and dabbed green random patterns to the rim of the bowl.
I made the shadow cooler with a touch of transparent blue in a glaze medium and added deeper blues to shade the bowl.
The 20cm square canvas (8 inches) is stretched on deep stretchers so I painted the sides.
The blue and yellow colours are carried around the sides.
I used a gloss glaze which slows drying and makes the paint workable for longer. Gloss Medium comes in tubes or larger tubs and is widely available from art suppliers (I ordered mine, Pebeo brand, online from Art Shop Skipton in Lancashire).
I continued adding textures, glazes, shadows and highlights to finish the painting.
Painting the daffodils in the background made me want to do more with them as a main feature and I went on to paint them again before they faded.
You can see the results here soon…