Today I Learned: Glazing and highlights.

"Tre Melanze" (Three Eggplants), $200 framed, 12"x7", acrylic on canvas panel, c)2010 valerie@berkelydesign.com

For still life painting, my style choice is in a portrait format, forgoing typical table settings such as bowls, cloths, baskets, etc.  (Hmmm... maybe more on that in the future!)  I tend to choose vegetables with shiny surfaces and deep colors.  Chilies are often posed; so are eggplants.  Decisions are not so much about the food (yet!).  My choices lead to lessons...

Lessons:
Composition - Subjects all in a row, fairly formal and static except for the hint of leaning within a 1/3 - 2/3 picture plane division. (Holding up a piece of paper to cover the two eggplants on the left will showcase the eggplant on the right and vice versa.)
Underpainting: I toned the background only with violets, reds and sienna.  Later as I built the background textures to feel warm,  I left the eggplant shapes bare white.  This ensured that later glazes would help the subjects "pop" off the background.
Color: Since the eggplants are such a deep cool purple, I made sure to keep the background warmer with sienna.
Glazing: this entire painting is built on many glazing layers of transparent paint (my favorite Tri-Art brand colors are inherently transparent plus the semi-gloss polymer medium adds extra sheen).  Building layers achieves a glow while allowing subtle changes in color.  Case in point: the final background evolved through many layers until it felt right... the beauty of acrylics is the flexibility to make changes.
Highlights: Dark eggplants have very big white highlights that seem intrusive at first.  The trick is to not just stroke on white paint which is too stark.  I began the highlight shapes with transparent blue, then lavendar, then white.  No highlight colors should ever be opaque.  I also made sure that the bottom of the eggplants reflected some of the sienna "table" colors.

Wow.  Lots of lessons.  To see this painting and many many more... Stay tuned...