10-day challenge: Still life

Theme: Still life (from observation)


So first post for 2015, and I thought it would be great to start the year off right. What better than doing stuff you suck at? Perspective and life studies have always been intimidating to me but in the end I think I enjoyed doing these so much more than any photo- or master-study I've done so far. Perhaps it's the comparison element that's missing and makes this more enjoyable; even if you see your mistakes and try to correct them and even if your corrections are still not spot on, the only thing to compare it to is the object in front of you and the way you perceive it - which in time and much practice you will eventually get better at. (If you're not sure what I mean by that, check out Anthony Jones' video on that matter. He words out very effectively what I've been thinking about on this studying business for quite some time now.)

Some of these are quite off, and the way I went about doing each study is a bit different for (almost) every study. I guess it's just a matter of finding an approach that fits you and the object you have in front of you. Most of these are very simple and the background in most cases was omitted or sort of improvised, because my set up was pretty uninspiring and/or didn't have hours available to devote to these. I will gradually get on to more complex objects in the next challenges to follow, but for a first-time tryout on doing this, it will have to do for the moment. The time-span varies from 1.5 to 3 or 4 hrs, depending on how many dumb mistakes I made and how much time I wasted on the ridiculously simple and boring background (next time that'll be a no-go). And those ellipses - man, by the end of this year I have to become better at them!! Switch the view a bit from above and that's it - game over.

And to sum up this self-reflective word-rampage: fear not the still life. Learn to see the form of things and paint on.
Learn, grow and achieve what you've set out to do. That's my wish for anyone reading this - if you've made it this far - or not, doesn't really matter.

_{Edit: Nr. 6 seems a bit messy, probably when I was moving it around, the light area that appears on the plane in shadow on the left side is not supposed to be like that, so.. yeah, just thought to mention that since I noticed it later on.}


Individual images can be seen here.

Thanks for looking!