A lot more detail has been added to the berry spoon and pear. Still working on details in the spoon handle, but the image begins to really pop on the page. 

Side note: My eyesight is a little troublesome these days. I need close up glasses for the detail work, but they seem to magnify the paper and painting too much! I've got to work on getting the right strength (enough of the CVS cheapo glasses!) The result is I find myself literally pouring over the detail to a degree I am not used to going to. It's interesting, but tends to become a tad anal!

Brilliant pallette

Simultaneously with Pear with Berry Spoon, I am working on a large painting for an old college friend. This is just the very beginning wash of the painting, one where I lay down the basic colors to guide me as I move towards layering and detail work. This painting features a brilliant pallette of purples, oranges and reds, tempered with a ribbon of complementing greens and blues. Sounds wild, yes? It is promising to be a gorgeous grouping of my favorite pallette of color! 

Keep an eye on this posting as it will hopefully materialize gradually into a painting of silver, tulips and persimmons, interesting light play and composition.

Detail of Pear of Berry Spoon

Onward to new work! This painting is meant as a potential commission for a friend. It features my grandmother's berry spoon and a bartlett pear. Here you will see the close-up detailed beginnings of the spoon's embellishments. I started with a light wash of yellow and gray - the yellow is a reflection of the pear's yellow-green skin. I build on the yellow with varying depths of black and gray to provide the proper drama needed in to bring out the details of the berry and leaf pattern.

Lemon on Blue Delft Plate

The final lemon painting. It's actually been finished for several days now, but I've been slow in getting the photo posted. I think working on three paintings at once must be distracting!!

Lemon series - Blue

This is the last 4x4 inch painting in this particular series of Lemon miniatures. I'm  working with blues in this one (as a result of personal request!) and hope that the china pattern comes through in this one. It's quite delicate with thin piping throughout - requiring a steady hand. I think I'm up to the challenge! I will be posting the final later today, and then onward to a large, intense commission piece that I will also be posting updates on here regularly. Watch for the sketches to be posted later today as well!