Still life discoveries with Brenda Holtom

This article was originally published in the April 1990 issue of Leisure Painter

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Colours

Black

White

Cadmium yellow

Yellow ochre

Raw sienna

Burnt sienna

Light red

Venetian red

Indian red

Alizarin crimson

Ultramarine blue

Viridian

Still life discoveries

When I was asked to contribute to this demonstration series I wondered which medium would be the most interesting and informative. I work in watercolour, gouache and oil, and enjoy all three. I have often been asked by people looking at my oils if they are in fact done in tempera or gouache since my paint is very matt and has the kind of ‘drawn’ quality which they associate with tempera rather than oil paint. Some areas are built up with many layers of brushwork while the painting develops and others hardly change from the first mark. So I thought it would be interesting to show some of the stages of this process.

I chose still life as my subject matter because I enjoy the discoveries that can be made over a period of time in objects that might superficially look very simple; to convey that simplicity in the finished painting means meeting the challenge of seeing great subtleties and describing them with honesty and love. Still lifes of course won’t need rests like a model or wilt like flowers so it was easier to keep a photographic record as I worked.

My kitchen has always been a favourite room to paint in. It contains many of my favourite objects and it faces south so that on sunny days it is bathed in a wonderful warm light which always lifts my spirits.

North facing studios have their advantages in that the light is even and allows a long session of painting, but it is cold, and to me seems rather unexciting. For this painting I had two and a half or three weeks to work each day until the sun travelled so far round that it fell across my easel and eventually hit the wall, transforming my subject completely and making further painting impossible. The situation was not improved when the clocks went forward as I had to get up an hour earlier to get the same amount of work done!

The objects here have not been specially arranged but are just hanging in their usual places. A friend pointed out that these objects are so familiar to me that I don’t realise how odd they may look to other people, so I’d better describe some of them. In the top right hand corner is an orangey object sitting on a pale wooden salt box. This is a very old and hard loaf of bread bought in a show in Ross-on-Wye which makes one loaf a day in the shape of an overweight hedgehog. On top of it is a small wooden elephant. These objects have been there so long that I can’t really remember how they got there in the first place.

I have never successfully ‘arranged’ a still life. Whenever I have tried they have always looked somehow contrived and unconvincing. I feel it is more interesting to present the subject matter in a purely documentary way, imposing myself only in as much as to decide the dimensions and the boundaries. Once I have decided to paint an ‘accidental’ arrangement of everyday things I have to leave notes for my flatmate explaining that these objects have now become part of a still life and can’t be moved. Even I sometimes pick something up when half asleep before realising with horror that it is part of my picture!

The structure

I began to consider this area of the kitchen as my subject matter because I enjoyed the patterns made by both the objects on the wall and the divisions of the shelves and the tiles. Because the picture takes in only a portion of one wall there was a danger that the viewer would feel excluded, so I stood at an angle to the wall to get a slight perspective on the tiles and a sense of space, if only a shallow one, to draw the viewer into the picture. The recessed wall on the left contributes to this effect.

The structure of a painting in terms of abstract shapes is of primary importance whatever the subject matter. Anyone looking at a painting for the first time will make immediate judgments, if only subconscious ones, about its strength of composition based on its abstract structure. I try to be aware of this in my painting right from the beginning, letting my instinct tell me when things feel right or wrong. To help me to decide on the proportions of the picture I used two L-shaped pieces of card as an adjustable frame. By moving the frame backwards and forwards I was able to choose how much to include and how much to leave out. Changing the dimensions only slightly in any direction made a huge difference to the composition. This technique showed me that I needed the bare strip of wall on the right to give a breathing space in what otherwise would be a rather busy picture. The narrow vertical strip on the left containing the shelves and the strip of tiles along the bottom form an L-shape which effectively frames and throws into relief the fragmented central area.

The materials

When I work in oils I like to paint on a toned ground which allows me to work up and down in tone from a mid-value without having the distraction of white canvas. This is a traditional technique which has been used since the 16th century by artists like Rembrandt, Titian, and Tintoretto. These particular artists used thin glazes to build up their dark tones, and opaque paint for the lights. Velasquez also painted on a coloured ground, often dull red, but he would paint the shadows thinly with scumbled paint rather than in glazes. This is more of the approach I have used in my picture.

I keep a stock of boards of different shapes and sizes which I prepare in advance with different types of ground. The board I used here was a piece of conservation mount board primed with two coats of rabbit skin glue (on each side to stop it from curling). This type of board is fine for small paintings and can always be backed with a stronger board later if necessary. I like it because it is lightweight so I can always carry a selection of sizes and colours with me for different circumstances.

I colour the primed boards by rubbing undiluted oil paint on to the surface, then wiping it off evenly with a soft rag, leaving a layer of paint thin enough for the white of the card (or other white priming on boards or canvas) to shine through. It can be done with any colour or combination of colours but it is important to be aware that the colour of this ground will affect the whole mood of the painting. It is a good idea to prepare a batch of boards over a couple of days so that you can devote plenty of space to an operation that can get quite messy.

These coloured grounds will need several weeks to dry completely so I always make sure that I have some spares. This one was coloured with burnt sienna and burnt umber.

I began by drawing directly on to the prepared board with a very diluted mixture of Winsor blue and burnt sienna. I used a long haired ox and sable hair brush (Winsor and Newton series 191. Number 3) which is flexible and holds plenty of paint. I used the paint very thinly so that I could easily wipe it off to correct the drawing if necessary. I wanted to keep the amount of drawing to a minimum and to build up the form using variations in colour. When I reached the point where I felt I had done enough I put it aside to dry until the next day. (Winsor blue and burnt sienna are both fast drying colours so this thin drawing was soon ready to work on.)

I laid out my palette the next day as follows: white, cadmium lemon, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, light red, Venetian red, Indian red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, viridian and black. I began with very gentle scumblings of paint establishing some of the middle range of tones. I used light red, black, white and yellow ochre to make a grey, adjusting it where necessary to make it warmer (more red and yellow) or cooler (more black). At this early stage I used a soft ¼” nylon Sceptre brush (Winsor and Newton), brushing excess paint out of it first so that I could drag the colour over the surface allowing the ground to show through.

The initial drawing was made directly on a prepared board with a very diluted mixture of Winsor blue and burnt sienna.

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I wanted to keep all areas of the painting moving together so that no parts were left behind. This meant trying to see the part I was working on in relation to the rest of the picture and judging its relative tone and colour in context rather than isolation.

At this stage the paint was kept thinned and either scumbled dryly using old soft brushes that had lost their point, or drawn thinly and liquidly using something like a Daler D77 Number 5.

I made full use of black as a colour at this point. Mixed with just white it appears quite blue against the warm background colour, and beautiful purples can be made by mixing it with white and an earth red like Venetian or Indian red.

The tile (top left) received a thin wash of Indian red, and I decided to paint out the large curved handle of the kettle in the bottom right hand corner. It didn’t add to the composition and it was difficult to understand what it was, cut off from the rest of the kettle.

With thinned paint I tried to keep all the parts of the painting moving.

In this photograph you can see how individual objects are beginning to come more into focus as I gradually bring up the lighter tones and establish the colours. But note how the ground is still being allowed to show through the broken of layer of paint in different parts of the building.

I worked on the patterned tile with light red, yellow ochre, and white to bring out its design. The centre of the tile, although looking quite green in the painting, is in fact made up of just black and white with a little yellow ochre, the black taking the usual role of blue here.

As I painted the highlight on the cooker back (bottom right) I noticed the plate on the top shelf (top left) which was catching the light in the same way. Once I had noticed and painted in the similarities between the two objects at opposite corners of the painting, the diagonal axis this created seemed to open up the composition and I could see many more beautiful colour relationships between other objects in the painting. I was eager to get on.

Individual objects began to come more into focus as I gradually brought up the lighter tones.

I really set to work now to bring out the three-dimensional quality of the objects. Sometimes tonal differences were slight but the form could be described by correctly observing and painting the subtle changes in temperature of a colour. Look for instance at the warm light and cooler shadow on the electrical socket. Although its tonal values in this stage aren’t greatly different from those in Stage 3, it now has more solidity.

I began to add warmer tones to the wall and the objects. Even greys that appear neutral, like the blade of the chopper, needed quite a lot of yellow ochre and light red in them because the warm ground tends to make neutral tints look blue. I must point out that these adjustments are very slight – it’s surprising how little red needs adding to a colour before it appears to come forward. When I corrected the highlight on the cooker edge to what was actually a slightly pinker colour it made the cooker stand forward from the wall.

Next I began to work intensely on the left-hand edge of the painting as this would be an important ‘anchor’ for the whole composition. This area is slightly more in shadow because the wall is recessed, so the tones are slightly darker and the colours bluer than those of the main wall. I had to be quite restrained when painting the objects here because while they had to look solid they also had to look as if they were at the back of the shelves. If I over-emphasised a light tone even slightly the object would leap forward and the unity would be destroyed.

Now I set to work to bring out the three-dimensional quality of the objects.

It is rare for a painting to keep making steady progress towards a successful conclusion. There is usually a point at which, in places, it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Here, in my eagerness to strengthen the picture I have darkened the tiles at the bottom. But I have gone too far and now they no longer work as part of the same wall. My eye now reads this dark shape more like a hole.

Here, I made a mistake by darkening the tiles at the bottom too much.

When I lightened the tone of the tiles and brought the colour back into them the painting immediately began working together again.

I decided to take a couple of objects off the middle shelf on the left because the group of small shapes seemed to be fragmenting that edge. The simpler shape of the plate alone worked much better.

The most obvious difference between this and the last stage is that I have completed the painting to the edges, particularly on the left and at the top, where things had been left rather shadowy. The last thing I did was to add a few highlights on the electric socket, the blue and white pot, the white metal salt box and the metal spoon hanging above it.

After lightening the tone of the tiles the painting immediately began working again.

The Kitchen Wall, oil, (11½” x 10½”)

Still life Discoveries with Brenda Holtom

Colours

Still life discoveries

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