1940's Christmas - Shiny Brite Demo Part 3 of 3

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Here's the wrap up of my little 5x5" painting titled "Shiny Brite".  I wanted to capture the warmth created by Christmas lights on a cold winter's night.

"Shiny Brite" by Scott Ruthven 5x5" Oil on Canvas

At the stage above, I finished the ball and it's reflection.  I tinkered with the reflected lights for a long while.  Then I painted the metal cap and hanger.  The top of the cap reflected light from a yellow bulb while in it's refection, more light from the red bulb can be seen.

Here, I painted the bulb in the box.  I kept it simple and made the reflections of the lightbulbs a bit smaller and less intense so the ball in the box doesn't pull too much attention.  I also darkened the hanger hook and added a highlight.

Here is a quick time lapse of the steps:

I learned so much painting this and really enjoyed the whole process.

1940's Christmas - Shiny Brite Demo Part 2

It's getting cold here in Colorado and the snow is falling!  I'm more than halfway through this little painting and today will show you the next few steps.

Here I've painted in the reflection using a darker, lower chroma version of the reflected light on the box.

With the box done, I had to start the ornament.  The more I look at the ornament, the more subtleties I see.  Not really knowing where to start, I just begin laying in easily identifiable shapes of color.

Here I further refine the subtle color blends from the lights.  I like the golden reflection of the box edge on the back of the ornament.  Once I got that in, I felt the shape and 3D nature starting to come to life.

I'll wrap this up in my next post!

1940's Christmas - Shiny Brite Demo Part 1

Picture of my still-life setup

Since I'm totally in the Christmas spirit and hopelessly attracted to shiny things I took a shot at painting this still life.  These "Shiny Brite" brand ornaments were made in the U.S.A. back in the 1940's.  

For the still-life, I arranged Christmas lights around the box of ornaments to create this wonderful warm and cool glowing light. 

To get a feel for the composition and color, I taped up a 8x11" sheet of canvas and painted these quick sketches.  I did them quickly and experimented with color and paint application.  The wording on the box required some trial and error to find a way to paint it so as to look flat, like printing on a box rather than hand painted lettering.  I also realized that the reflections and multiple colors of light on the ball required careful study.

10-30 minute color sketches

Simple underpainting with initial values laid in.

Once I found the layout I liked, I drew it out onto this 5x5" stretched canvas.  Hopefully the viridian underpainting will help me create that flat effect I want on the green lettering.  The underpainting also helps establish the cool shadows and when the thicker, warm yellows and reds are painted on top they will really radiate.  Using thin, transparent grey (Ultramarine Blue + Burnt Sienna) I laid in the value structure.

In the three pics above you can see how I used white to bring out the highlighted areas then scrubbed in pure paint (without medium) for the lettering.  Then I painted the cool blues and greens in the right side of the box and shadow from the ornament.  Lastly, the warm yellow to orange tone was worked into the front of the box and painted around the lettering.

I'll keep painting and show my progress over the next couple of posts.  Gee, I hope I don't mess up the painting...that would be embarrassing now that I posted the beginning.  So, if there are no further posts that might indicate that I ran into a problem ;-)

Scott