Fruit and flowers. Oil 10” x 11”

Taken from the April 1989 issue of Leisure Painter, Kate Delhanty breaks an oil painting down into four stages for us and describes her working procedure.

Preparation

This is a personal method developed gradually over the years and is not necessarily the right way for anyone else to paint. It is a method that needs a good deal of slow, sustained and controlled observation.

The white ground can be a distraction but I find its value as a luminous base, giving lustre to the colours, outweighs its inconvenience. However, the ground could be tinted if desired. Each painter will develop his own method in the process of discovery.

Still life subjects can give one some control over nature. The composition can be planned and the objects that I have chosen for this exercise will not change in appearance, with any luck, for some days.

A north light will help as the still life group is placed near a window and the changing sunlight would affect it.

As I am working in a somewhat dark attic studio, I have hung a white sheet over a beam opposite the window to reflect the light and soften the rather hard shadows.

Now all is ready to begin and as long as one has chosen or arranged a group that delights one in its beauty of form, colour, light and texture, and manages to remain undisturbed, one’s concentration should not flag.

Demonstration: Fruit and Flowers

Stage one

Stage 1 -The drawing done in pencil on paper can be as rough and experimental as you like, and at this stage the elements in the group can be moved about to form a good composition.

First I sketch the arrangements with pencil on paper, starting freely, then with gathering precision measure spaces, angles and relationships.

At this stage the drawing looks confused and messy as one searches for the ‘bones’ of the design and tries to simplify the chaos. It can be further corrected and clarified while transferring it to the primed support, in this case a hard board base, and I can decide about the position of the group within the frame.

The drawing is then lightly reworked with a watercolour felt tip pen when the tracing has been made.

Stage two

Stage 2 - The drawing is transferred to the hardboard which has been primed with a white Cryla base, using two or three coats. A beginning is made, preferably working from left to right, with an assessment of the limits of light and dark tones that can be made.

My palette is set out with white at the top right hand side, then the yellows, cadmium and ochre, the reds, cadmium and alizarin, ending with Payne’s grey which doubles up as a blue.

I try to mix the exact tone and colour needed on the palette before transferring it to the painting, making an assessment of the comparative relationships all the time.

As I paint on a white ground, I use a white, not a mahogany, palette. The paint is placed with the knife freshly and with confidence, responding to the surface of the object in front of me.

I like to make positive preliminary decisions and try not to, as it were, ‘think on the canvas’. This first statement can always be scraped off and re-stated if need be. I find it important to use one layer of paint only in order to retain the underlying luminosity of the white Cryla base which can then enhance the overlying colours.

I suppose my methods are akin to those of fresco painting which is worked in small plastered sections, each being completed before moving on to the next.

Stage three

Stage 3 - Half way through the work, showing the way one tonal passage juxtaposes with another.

A study of Cezanne’s work shows his almost plastic feel for the solidity of fruit, faces and landscapes.

It may be the frustrated sculptor in me that makes me try to freeze the ephemeral movement of light and colour in order to construct positive forms.

The numerous touches of varied colour, seen in the apples, placed in facets with the painting knife, help to produce a vibrant, lively surface which is held in place by its profile against the level plane of the table.

The aim with the bowl of flowers is to make it as solid and simple as the fruit while always being conscious of the whole while painting the detail.

I find the small painting knife a perfect tool for expressing the crusty textures of the dried flowers, although there is a danger in becoming too self-conscious about it.

Finally, the finished work, if successful, should contain a liveliness and presence of its own which, is indeed, a great good fortune to achieve.

The finished painting

Stage 4 - The finished painting; Fruit and flowers. Oil 10” x 11”