Cups of Coffee.. After Teddi Parker

I discovered Teddi Parker after listening to a podcast at Learn to Paint Podcast. And then I found her Instagram, and her website. In looking at her work, I was struck by one with 4 cups of coffee: black and bubbly, mildly creamy and one quite milky. I believe hers was done using acrylic house paint. In any case, I wanted to copy her different coffee colors, the bubbles, the shadows in the mugs, and the highlights.

This was done strictly as a study, on an 8×8 canvas.

Red Rose.. After Carol Marine

This red rose is from Carol Marine’s works on the Daily PaintWorks website. I wanted more practice with roses. I drew this one out first on a 6×6 birch panel.

I started with alizarin crimson, and then mixed it with either yellow, white, or dark blue to get the different red shades. The olive green leaves and stem were created with yellow and black. There’s one section of teal blue that really should be the purplish shadow color, there right in the center of the painting.

Golden Apples… After Carol Marine

I own Carol Marine’s book Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often To Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist and admire her style. (She has paintings for sale on the Daily PaintWorks website. ) Anyway, now I can’t remember where I found the original image for this copy: either her book or the website.

My main focus in trying to copy here was my brushwork. I wanted my brush strokes to follow the form of the apple, or the length of the cloth, or the direction of the shadow, etc. I painted this on a 6×6 birch panel which I gessoed before drawing the image. I used burnt sienna, Mars black, cad-free yellow medium, and Titanium White. The 2 brushes I used were fairly small; hence too many brush strokes!

Red Shoes

Once upon a time, I had a pair of red shoes like this. My 8×8 painting is based on a photo by Emily Pottiger on Unsplash. I kept my palette limited.

Background color — Ultramarine Blue, Cad-free Yellow Medium, Titanium White

Shoes — Anthraquinone Red, Naphthol Red, Phthalo Green Blue Shade, Titanium White

There’s a few things I need to tidy up… the stiletto heel needs to be straighter; the drawing was better. The shadow of the leftmost shoe should be straighter, as should the divider line (for lack of a better phrase).

Green Apples…Round 2

So, after making my apples too green (and dark) with mostly Winsor & Newton Sap Green (and some yellow, believe it or not, I tried a “convenience” color (Yellow Green from Amsterdam). That got me closer, but at that point, I was over-painting the original dark green apples. The third try, I got closer to the color I wanted, but I ceased paying attention to the darker shapes in the reference image (including the shadows).

The only thing I’m relatively satisfied with right now is the dark area around the apple stems. AND that I finally got reasonably close to the local color of the apples.

I need to paint this again from scratch, but frankly, I’m temporarily sick of apples! 🙂

Here are the value comparisons between the reference photo and the original painted green apples, and the reference compared to the final painting.

Originally, my lights were too dark, while some darks (the cast shadows) weren’t dark enough. Now my lights are okay but the darks aren’t dark enough. And the apple at the left is misshapen.