Still Life - Pearl Strands

Pearl Strands - 16" x 20"

For this assignment I chose to paint a string of black/blue pearls and strings of beads on a silk scarf. The best part about my composition is that the string of pearls farther back is in shadow. This allows for there to be huge difference in chroma. The scarf behind the pearls in shadow is extremely low in chroma compared to the scarf in the foreground. There is a huge contrast in colors between the foreground and the background. I angled the light this way on purpose to give the painting more interesting points. This allowed for use of high and low chroma and lots of shadows. This also helps to give the painting a sense of depth. Also just the difference in the two strands of pearls makes for an interesting painting. I think the stands of beads coming out of the jewelry box give a sense of atmosphere and the reflection of the beads in the wood turned out really nice. I used an academic style to paint the entire canvas. I changed this after the painting looked too stiff. To smooth out the different edges for a softer look I used my little finger. I scumbled the paint where two colors were alongside one another. This give the piece a finished more stylized look.

Color Schemes and Harmonies

My first painting measures 11” x 14” and is composed using an analogous harmony. The colors I used are red-red violet-violet. I chose this color scheme because I wanted to keep the radishes a reddish hue. I used a very light wash on the negative space to give it a set back feeling. The background has lower chroma than the foliage or the radishes. I tried to keep the chroma high in the foreground. I think the visible brush strokes in the bottle give it character. The edges on the bottle and around the foliage are much harder than the edges of the radishes. I think this piece looks finished and once I wiped out the background it looked good.



My second painting also measures 11” x 14” and uses a split complimentary color scheme. I chose to keep the radishes red but the foliage is a mix of blue-green and yellow-green. There were a lot of shadows in this composition; the focal point of the painting is a small radish in the middle of the canvas with a cast shadow across it. There isn’t much negative space in this painting because it’s such a close up view. There are some very dark spaces that are shadow in which I tried to only use a light ash over the undertone. The chroma is very high in the lighted areas and very low in the shadows. The radishes have a good sense of being a round form and the leaves look like their flatter. The edges of the vegetables and foliage are soft, while the shadows have hard edges. I don’t think this painting has a very good sense of space.



My last painting is quite larger and has a very different composition using only two large radishes. I think this one works the best because I used a different method on the painting. I did the radishes with a lower chroma on the shadowed edges and lower chroma in the foliage under the radishes. I also did the foliage in a more abstract way then I’d used in the two previous paintings. There is a huge value range from bright yellow to a very dark green. It works well because there is a lot of light in the painting and shadows being cast because of that. I think this painting works better than the second because in the second the radishes look like they’re floating, here they look like they’re resting on the foliage. I used harder edges on the lighted sides of things.

Science Class

This is a piece I did my senior year of high school using Adobe publisher.

I used Pantone color charts to create the color scheme.

The printed copy is 17"H by 11"W.

(The top corner does show some glare from the lighting.)

This is also my most successful piece, after submitting it to the AP Collegeboard as part of my portfolio the piece was selected to be published on the 2007/2008 AP guidlines poster.

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/190197.html