Painting a Still Life

Tom often uses fruit in his still life classes because of their interesting shapes, colors, and shadows. As a class demonstration, he took a simple fruit bowl on a tablecloth and transformed it into this beautiful painting – SF

Tom wrote:

Whenever I do a still life, I light the subject with a lamp so I’ll have shadow and light. I draw the scene on the canvas. I draw each shape I see, like the shapes of shadows or of light. For example, I draw the shadowed areas of the bananas, then the lighted areas. Once the drawing is in, I begin painting. When I paint I don’t think “I’m painting a banana,” instead I think “that shadow shape has a blue tint to it,” so I’ll paint that. Then I might think “there is a blue-green shape” and I’ll paint it, instead of thinking I’m painting the edge of a plate. The cloth is white, but with the yellow light shining on it I use a yellowish tint.  If you think about it, my process is like putting together a puzzle. I paint shapes and colors and they eventually come together as a picture.