Nailed It! Little Blue Pitcher Painting

"Mom's Pitcher", 7x5" oil painting on canvas board

This is a little  painting I did yesterday of a blue green glass pitcher that had been my mother’s. It's a 7x5 inch oil painting on canvas board.

I put off doing this little color study for two days because I was afraid of messing it up. How silly is that? It’s a study for goodness sakes, not the Mona Lisa!

The idea was to use up leftover paint from the blue color chart by doing a small painting, just for fun.  But, by the time I got around to it, most of the paints had dried so I was limited in the number of blues I could use. Adding a teeny bit of Winsor Green and a teeny bit of purple turned the painting into an analogous color study to give it more punch. 

And, Voila’! It turned out really really well! 

The main colors are Ultramarine blue, Cerulean Blue and some touches of Prussian Blue along with Titanium White and the green and purple. Oh, yes, and some Delft Blue which is a very dark blue. 

I drew directly on the canvas from life and made myself use a larger brush for the background and foreground, a #12 Winsor Newton Monarch flat. The rest was done with a #6 Monarch flat. Keeping the painting loose was a goal and not fussing with brush strokes was another. 

All in all, I’m very pleased with the way I captured the look of translucent glass, rendered the shape fairly accurately and didn’t overblend. I love the brush strokes and reflections, especially in the table top. 

I am eager to do more of these and just wish I’d thought to do them after finishing the other color charts to use up those dabs of leftover color. 

As a bonus, here is a small sketch from life that I did of our kitty, Molly, while she slept one evening on the foot stool. It’s basically a line drawing but still captured some dimensionality. I’m very pleased with it, too. 

Meanwhile, I’m reading a very good book on color, Paints and Colors by David Pyle. It’s so good that it’s hard to put down, and I wish I’d found it many years ago. 

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends and followers! Let the summer begin!

"Molly's Nap" pencil cat drawing