Book Review: Painting Sharp Focus Still Lifes

A student recently let me borrow her copy of Painting Sharp Focus Still Lifes:  Trompe L'Oeil Oil Techniques by Ken Davies (b. 1925) and Ellye Bloom.  It is a classic and very well done.  It starts with some exercises, including some useful ones one color.  It doesn't go into color theory really at all, so another book would be necessary for this.  My favorite exercise in the book is to paint a shiny white ball surrounded by different colors of fabric to practice reflected light.  The end of the book goes into demonstrations.  I thought the demo on scumbling to achieve wood textures and the small section on turning edges would be particularly helpful to my students.  Also his explanation of trompe l'oeil techniques was very well done. 



To see a modern master of trompe l'oeil, check out Anthony Waichulis' work at the John Pence Gallery.

Simultaneous Contrast

I was teaching a student the other day and we were having a problem.  She was mixing color to use in painting an antique wood box that was a support for a still life setup.  There is a wood fired clay canister that has a beautiful yellow green glaze and several antique copper pieces in the still life.  I had her do a burnt sienna underpainting to complement the green glaze and help with the copper.  I showed her how to mix a color using yellow ochre and burnt sienna for the wood box and she got a nice warm yellow brown.  She put it on the canvas, and it was green.  Hmm...I had a suspicion we were dealing with simultaneous contrast.  But, the effect was more striking than any I had seen before, I wanted to be sure.  I had her clean the brush, same thing.  I tried another tube of yellow ochre, same thing.  I tried a different brand of yellow ochre, yet again it appeared green against the burnt sienna underpainting.  A very cool opportunity to illustrate to my student the concept of simultaneous contrast.

The original color, a mix of yellow ochre and burnt sienna, on the palette

Notice how the yellow ochre  looks green when applied over the burnt sienna underpainting

Simultaneous contrast is how two colors (or two values) next to each other can change how our brain perceives them.  Many optical illusions are based on this effect.

Click here to see some simultaneous contrast illusions based on value.
Click here to see some simultaneous contrast illusions based on color.

To overcome this problem, I had her use a mix of burnt sienna and cadmium yellow medium, which gave her the color she was looking for.  We will use the effect of the yellow ochre appearing green against the burnt sienna to good effect when it comes to painting the pottery canister.