Painting #171 - July 14 - still life with eggs #3

Well, don't know how long I can keep this up, think I got too carried away today, this took me a bit longer than the other 2 did, of course I had a lot more eggs, but the glass was simpler, don't know why it took longer, you'd think that it would have been easier, but not, these eggs really took me a while, I have about 4-1/2 or more hours in them, yesterday's only took me 2 hours, and that just doesn't seem right, oh well, it's done now, going to be a busy week-end and then the week, then maybe next week too, got family coming in, so have lots to do, and I also have to get the neighbor to the hospital for a something or other that her husband doesn't seem fit to take her for, so, I get to, and I have lots to do (cleaning house and changing bedding), and sweeping and dusting and all that stuff to do yet, and I'm sure I won't get it all done, so, I'm thinking I might have trouble getting my blogs done over the week-end and possibly during the week too, sure hope I can keep this going, sure don't want to get behind again.

Well, here we go, this painting is done of 140 lb. hot press and for some reason, the 140 lb. paper doesn't paint as well as the 300 lb., I like the smoothness of this paper but it is more absorbent than the 300 lb paper is, this one turned out ok, but I don't think the paint moves as well on it. I started by sketching the vase with the eggs, then I painted the table and backdrop, I painted around the vase and the eggs. Then I started working the vase and the eggs, I laid in the basic shape of the vase and tried to fill in the spaces behind the eggs with the correct color, well, you see, I don't have a very good place to take these photo's, so I used a piece of my 10" x 10" illustration board, one for the table and one for the background, then I moved around to get the lighting I wanted, and when I did that, I ended up with some dark places behind the vase (The dark shows through the glass, and not the light background that I really wanted to see through the glass), so I had to make up the colors in the background, and the color should show through the glass so, that's what I tried to accomplish. I know these are very colorful eggs, but they are really white eggs, the the shadows looked so warm, I could see hints of the orange all over the place, so I just tried to paint what I saw, I set this up this morning, before I went to my Marshall classes, and had my plan all worked out. Usually, I scan through my photo's to come up with a subject to paint. I did ask the girls to help me come up with some other suggestions for eggs, since I'd like to carry this theme for at least 10 paintings, hopefully.

I really had to work to get those eggs smooth, the opaques don't like to blend much, but, with a little effort, I ended up dry brushing, and blended them that way, I like this painting, and I hope you like it too.