Painting from life shows up so many colours and brings new insights in the work which are usually missing in paintings from photographs. I have tried my hand at the following lemon paintings.
Lemons in a Blue Plate
The lemons have been painted using lemon, cadmium and ochre yellow. Looking down on the lemons placed in a plate with sunlight casting bright shadows of lemons and plate, I tried figuring out the colours.
Lemons in a Glass Bowl
Next, I placed the lemons in a glass bowl. This is my first painting of a glass bowl. In retrospect, I think I should have placed more emphasis on drawing a proper ellipse of the rim before painting. At some places the colour of the glass bowl seemed closer to sap green, at other places it seemed to have a bluish and greyish tinge. One lemon appeared to be more greener, other one had more darker colour due to shadows falling on it.
Lemon Tea
Lemon Tea is the next painting in this sequence of lemon painting. This has another first, my first teacup and sauces painting. The golden base of the teacup was painted using cadmium yellow, blue, white and red.This painting is also a study of the primaries with cherries added to it.
Lemon and Creamer
Lemon and a Creamer gave me the opportunity to observe the colours in a white creamer. How the yellows, blues and reds in small quantities added to the white make the shape of rounded objects evident. The handle of the creamer was casting a shadow on it. The painted flowers on the creamer were lightened by the sunlight.
This is how the four paintings put together look.
Oil Paintings by Navdeep Kular 