Home for the Holidays
underpainting
9" x 12"

I'm back to painting again after the Thanksgiving holiday and ready to focus on getting some paintings under way for my show next April. But first, I really needed a new desk for my home office, so I dedicated this week to building my own Parsons table from scratch. Every so often I get an urge to build with my hands and work that other part of my brain. I finished the table today and enlisted a tired April (my wife) to help me schlep the beast from my studio, around the front of the house, navigate down the narrow hall to the back bedroom which has now been officially ordained as my "office". She's a trooper and must really love me to move furniture and the end of her work day wrangling high school students as a VP- and keep a smile on her face.

Anyway, my new slap of oil paint on board is a holiday painting dedicated to the engineering feat of canned jellied cranberry sauce. I was lamenting the fact that somehow I missed out on the homemade, organic cranberry sauce my brother-in-law Larry brought to our house, so I really wanted to pay homage to the kind I grew up with- straight out of the can and able to hold its shape once released from said can.

As a subject matter, canned cranberry sauce is a poor model, unable to hold a pose for too long, so getting a good reference photo together is priority one. And here's the best shot which offered all the dramatic Hollywood lighting that my cheap studio lights could muster:

Not bad for an amateur photographer such as myself...

It's a good idea to print out a black and white version of the image too, it helps in seeing the range of value without the colors getting in the way.



Here's the set up before the photo is taken, obviously no expense was spared in this production with the lighting equipment. Tonight, the cranberry "tower" is in the refrigerator slowly losing its mass to the cold, dry air, so its time as a functioning model for this painting is obviously limited. Which is good after all, if this painting turns out well it might make a swell Christmas card.

Cheers!