About The Artist

My photo
Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Hello! I am a fine arts painter, with a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My primary painting medium is oil and alkyd, and mostly I work in a representational style. My greatest challenge as a painter is to capture the effect of light; and my greatest joy as a painter is to accomplish that. Many thanks to those readers who have been following this blog since Day 1 (May 19, 2008). To those who are visiting for the first time today...Welcome, and thanks for dropping by!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

No Easy Lemon

Lemon Study, 2011
Original: oil, alkyd on 3" x 5" panel
SOLD

It's been a few weeks since I painted and posted the grisaille rendering of a lemon. A couple of you asked what grisaille (pronounced griz-eye) is. Basically, it is a painting done in black, white, and grays...like using black and white film to photograph something.

Once the grisaille painting is dry, color is usually added to the painting via thin glazes of diluted oil colors. This is a very traditional method for developing a painting, allowing the artist to establish the correct "values" or graytones before taking on color considerations.

Although I was happy with the graytone version, I wasn't happy with the color glazing results. So, I have been fooling around with this painting for the past week. My greatest challenge was to keep the lemon from looking like a yellow hand grenade. (It's odd what your mind will conjure up when working too intensely!)

Thanks for taking a look.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Text and image ©2011 Carol Adamec. All rights reserved.

1 comment:

Lisa Rivas said...

Oh I think this lemon looks great! Wondrous Color!