Here is my latest still life (Autumn Still Life #2) painting with its unraveling development.

Autumn Still Life #2
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas

Greetings fellow Steemians!,

As I do realize that it has been quite some time now since I last posted an intensive process revealing blog post on my work, now I thought it would be good time to share my latest painting and discuss its lengthy development.

I admit that this painting took waaaayy longer than planned. I felt that I was completely absorbed in its completion and was dead set on finishing it, so here it goes!

(Here is my setup in real life)

Using some standard craft paper, as usual I began with an initial block in drawing with charcoal in which eventually would be transferred onto the painting surface and sealed with ink.

Now that I sealed in the transfer drawing with ink on the blank white canvas surface, I then started to mass in the shadows with thinned burnt umber.

Using mixtures of venetian red, ultramarine blue and titanium white, I then mixed several value strings ranging from the red to blue, and then mixing increasing piles of lighter value each from those separate piles. I used these strings to lay in the initial pass of the background.

I then proceeded the same way towards the ground plane and foreground.

I found laying in the pumpkin to be especially difficult. Not only was I simultaneously refining the drawing, but I also was attempting to accurately capture its chroma. This object I found to have taken up most of the time, not necessarily because of its size in relation to the rest of the picture.

The onion and the corn in the background I decided to work on next. Logically, I chose to save refining the corn til the end of the painting.

The second onion behind the bowl and the bowl itself was next.

Now going back to the pumpkin, progressively from right to left I then started the second pass. Some sections of the painting were particularly “thirsty” so some sections were painted even a third time before moving on. Once sections “decided” to refrain from sinking in, I then could accurately judge colors and values adjacent to what was previously painted.