Metal Tea Kettle

Metal Tea Kettle 7 x 12
Oil Painting
by John Kelley

This is my first attempt at using sight sizing in the studio (or I guess I should say 1 to 1 sight sizing).  As with the outdoor paintings it has slowed down how I draw but sped up the process due to the accuracy. This is also the first still life I have done this small in relation to the actual size.  Sort of a mini-painting.  In order to do a 1 to 1 sight size painting as large as the objects themselves I would have had to put the panel directly parallel to the setup.  Some of the academic ateliers teach this method with great success. I find all that walking back and forth to be painful on many levels.

I really struggled with the values on this one until the very last sessions.  For me that always goes back to the desire to paint what I know.  There was so much detail in the metal pot that I thought I needed to define it all (which for me equals putting in a lot of small shapes of the wrong value so you can see them).  I finally scraped it all off, darkened the essential values, put in a few touches for the apples and told myself to stop. There are still a few things that need to be worked on once it dries but for the most part I'm please with this experiment.