Painting is a skill in which finesse comes only through practice and hard work. It is an intrinsic knowledge which gets embedded deep inside as one progresses on the learning curve. Elementary knowledge can be gained through secondary sources regarding the tools and techniques of oil painting but the learning comes only by doing it. Which colours to use, what amount to mix, which medium to add, how to apply colours, which brushes to use, impact and direction of brushstrokes; one gets better and better at it through each painting.

As I was painting flowers in a vase, I realised how much I enjoyed painting the vase. The idea to paint more than one vase in a single painting occurred at that point of time. That is how the following two paintings came into being.

I wanted to mix the blues and experiment with different shapes of the vases. These paintings gave me ample opportunity to do so. Cobalt, ultramarine, Prussian blue were mixed with viridian hue, lemon yellow and titanium white for various vases. It was fun to paint the highlights on the vases. Once the vases were painted, I felt like painting some flowers in them. So added the peonies in one of the vases in each painting.

The colour of the background is in contrast to those of the vases. The table and the background were painted using the same three colours i.e. crimson lake, ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow. How  the ratio of colours in the mix can yield a vastly different end result is apparent from this study.