Still Life with Fruits, Mug, Jug, and Glass

Painting is a creative activity. The most exciting aspect of it is the process of making art, during which the artist communicates with the silent object by his brushes. He starts out with a blank canvas and some observation of the object, be it physical or conceptual. Then, he will use all materials and tools at his disposal to create something out of nothing, and in so doing he keeps thinking and adjusting the way he approaches the object. In the end, he brings about a new creation, the finished product, which embodies his ideal of aesthetics that may or may not be appreciated by the audience at large.

I have recently gone through such a joyful process and am happy to share with you, my friends, this personal experience of art making as an example below:

First, I decided to paint a still life with some fruits and small items from kitchen. To this end, I assembled a collection of items (see the picture on the bottom left), including kiwis, grapes, bananas, coffee mug, sake jug, and wine glass. I put all fruits in a pottery plate and used a red hand towel to enrich the texture and color combination. Once the object and scene are thus set, I moved to the next critical step, which is to give a rough sketch of the object (see the picture on the bottom right). Although some people can paint directly without a sketch, I am a firm believer of drawing before painting. The sketch needs not be detailed, but it can give me a general idea of the proportion of each item, and how I should place them relative to one another.

Once the sketch is done, I moved to the last and the most exciting part of the process, i.e., painting with brushes and colors. In this step, I paid special attention to the choice of colors, the contrast between light and shadow, and the background arrangement. Many small decisions are involved and careful executions of these ideals are paramount. For example, my object has a boring white wall as the background. To address this problem, I decided to use the color of green, which is the most prominent color of items displayed, as my basic background color. But, to paint the whole wall with a uniform green color would be boring too. Hence, I used the trick from Cézanne to do two tones of the same color: in this case, one light green and the other dark green with an uneven divide of the background. Furthermore, I borrowed the trick from van Gogh to do some brush strokes that give a visual effect of movement. In doing so, I attempted to turn the weakest part of my scene, the boring white background, into something as attractive as the object displayed. I hope you like the final product shown above!