Dear Subscribers,

Greetings!

New still life. Actually, does this type of thing even qualify as a still life anymore? I'm not sure. I'll just say new painting:

The setup:

Big fat expensive grapes. I put the dark ones up there too because I was thinking I might be incorporating some of those dark values into the mutant cluster of grapes. Didn't end up looking at them but you might as well be prepared.

Hung on nails:

First stage. I used a previously scraped panel with the intention of leaving some of those interesting marks showing through. A grape cluster is usually just a dark mass, so I massed it in. Much easier that way:

Next. With the exception of that ocher-y swatch of background to the left of the cluster, it's basically just knife from here on out. Now defining grapes, one by one. A good mentality for grapes is 'slow and steady wins the race.' I somewhat needed to restrain the instinct to jump around the painting.

Good thing I like painting grapes.

Normally I would have painted the focal blue grapes first, but in this case I felt it more useful to work top-to-bottom because grape shapes were casting shadows on lower grapes, and I didn't predraw them.

Not quite grapey enough yet, needed more bloom to give form.

And the finished painting, "Outlier" (14x11):

(Click through the image above to Like it, Pin it, Tweet it)

I recommend viewing the larger image HERE. Much more tasty.

On Friday I'll be in Denver for the opening reception of Contemporary Realism at Gallery 1261.

As a bonus I'll be able to catch Daniel Sprick's "Fictions" at the Denver Art Museum before it ends! Yes!

Until next week,

David A. N. Cheifetz
www.davidcheifetz.com

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