Category: still life

still life

Why I’m Falling in Love with Still Life

Lori Rivera

I know I seem to be all over the map with my art, and while I am starting to develop a style in my abstracts, still life painting keeps tugging at me. What draws me to still life is that setting up your scene is an art in itself. The possibilities are endless and I think I am most drawn to still lifes that are a bit quirky, meaning the objects in the still life don’t really relate at all. An example of this is this still life painting by Leonid Afremov — a high heel shoe with fruit. Another example is the piece I created in still life class recently, below.  That is what I love about still life — the ability to create unique set ups — essentially creating an imaginary world. I can’t take credit for the setup in the painting below though. My art instructor set that up.

StillLifeFiveObjects

My Dad is currently building a still life setup for me, one that adjusts up and down with a shadow box. I can’t wait until it is finished so I can continue on with my still life painting. Not sure what I will paint first with my setup, but I’m thinking I might use some objects I got from a second hand store. Second hand stores are great for finding interesting objects.

Here is an interesting article and two YouTube videos about still lifes that are awesome.

Setting Up a Successful Still Life

Composition Setting up and Lighting a Still Life for Oil Painting by Stefan Baumann

Composition – Eye Movement and setting up a still life for painting -Alla Prima -Stefan Baumann

~ Lori

still life

Why the Switch to Objective Art?

Lori Rivera

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You may have wondered if I’ve lost it in the past week. The answer is no; I still have all my marbles…all my faculties. But yes, I have always said nonrepresentational art is my thing and I would never switch to creating objective art.

It all started with my florals, and just like when I take a break from a painting and come back to it a day, week, or even a month later, I am then able to view it with fresh eyes and solve problems I couldn’t solve before. The same applies when you are looking for something you’ve lost. You may look for hours, only to find that if you take an hour break and then come back, you almost instantly find your lost item. Sometimes we need change in our life…in our art, an even bigger change than simply taking a break and stepping away. Sometimes we need a change of pace, and mine happens to be abandoning my nonrepresentational pieces for, well, I’m not sure how long.

I was starting to feel stuck — really stuck! I recently wrote a blog post on getting through a creative block, but I think the one thing I left out is to try a different style of art, so that’s my current detour on my journey. I’m hoping when I return to some nonobjective paintings, I’ll hit the ground running with some new knowledge learned from painting pieces of recognizable objects.

I guess this is a good time to also mention that I don’t think either type of art is better than the other. But, for a long time my preference was simply to paint abstractly…as a matter of fact, for a long time I would say in regards to my own paintings, “the more abstract, the better.” I have an appreciation for both types of art (objective and nonobjective), but I do think they usually serve different purposes.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a classically trained artist, other than art classes in middle/high school. With that, I felt like I needed another boost so I signed up for still life painting classes, and hopefully figure painting classes in the future as well. It never hurts to have others teach you some tips and tricks in your journey and make sure you are grounded in the basics. Sometimes, even for experienced painters, it’s good to start at square one again.

So to that…try something new today! 😊

Cheers!
Lori

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