Painting challenge day 1

Day 1 Setup

As a still life artist the time to complete a painting is very flexible. Unless you're painting fish, cut fruit or cut flowers you can paint a setup over weeks. When I started going out plein air landscape painting I had a real challenge. How do I compose, set up equipment and paint a landscape in the few hours of ever changing light? My wife Linda Volrath and a good artist friend Sandra Corpora would organize plein air marathons and invite me along. Our marathons consist of two landscape painting sessions per day for 3, 4 or 5 days straight. At the end of every day we would line up the paintings and critique. By the end there were 20 to 30 paintings lined up. Quite an accomplishment. I decided to see if I could duplicate this with still life painting. I prepared and set aside a five day stretch to see what would happen. Of course the daily painting groups have been doing this for years, but I had never finished a still life in one day. My plan was to do simple setups and attempt a morning painting and an afternoon painting. I assembled the setup here for day one and realized it was not simple so one painting per day became the new goal.

First Break

After several hours of placing and blocking in, this is my progress at the mid-morning break.

Second break

Second break progress late afternoon. Things are roughly where they belong and refining color and drawing.

End of day 1
"V",  Steven J Parrish, Oil on Linen, 8" x 10"

End of day 1, exhausted. Stopped at around 9:30 pm. Adjusted color temperature, shadows, background and drawing.


When the painting dries I will determine if it needs any touch up to call it complete, but all in all it's at least 90% finished. Clean palette, brushes, drink a glass of wine and figure out a setup for day 2!