Project Still Life – Exercise “Still Life with man-made objects”

I had been thinking of trying to make a painting of musical instruments for a while and the brief for this exercise forced me into taking the plunge. My reticence was mainly due to my feeling that the complexities of the lines and shapes of the instruments would make the rendition of a good painting difficult. Could I manage to make the instruments look and feel real? How much detail should I add ? How should I group some instruments together to make an interesting composition that didn’t look too contrived? With all these questions and more I decided to proceed.

I looked at what I had available and went for three simpler shaped instruments, a mandolin, a recorder and a toy accordion. I arranged these on a chair and took a few photographs of various compositional arrangements.

The third arrangement seemed to be the most pleasing to me so I then created a background by draping an old curtain over the chair and arranged the instruments. I took two further photographs and also made two quick sketches of the composition to see how it worked on paper.

I was reasonably happy with the composition so proceeded to set about creating the painting. As the proportions and scale of the subjects was important I mapped out a simple grid and first drew the main lines and shapes with pencil then went over the main lines with white acrylic. I had chosen to use a violet ground to work upon.

I then proceeded to work up the painting starting with the darkest areas and working through to lighter parts. The photograph below shows the work in progress.

The final painting is below. I’m reasonably happy with the outcome. The positives being the mandolin itself and in particular the reflections on the body which I think look realistic. The backdrop and folds in the curtain are ok. I’m less happy with the accordion which although it looks ok and is sized correctly looks small. It is a toy accordion and therefor is small but it seems too small in the painting. Lastly my aim in my minds eye was to try to stay away from being too literal and pictorial but I did not achieve this. None the less the final picture works quite well although I’m torn between reducing the size from A3 to a squarer size so as to eliminate some of the background. I will pose this question to James when I submit my work for Assignment Two.

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