Seeing red
Sandra Corpora experiments with her collection of red oil paints in preparation for a still-life painting of red roses in a silver bowl, and includes her top tips for exploring colour
Sandra Corpora experiments with her collection of red oil paints in preparation for a still-life painting of red roses in a silver bowl, and includes her top tips for exploring colour
Iwas working towards a group exhibition of still-life paintings and thought to challenge myself by painting deep red roses in a silver bowl. One of the things I like best about still life is that you can completely control your composition. It can take hours to get the elements chosen, arranged just right, and make the lighting behave for you.
I knew my painting was to be about the richly coloured red roses. For contrast, I chose a light drapery background, which even in shadow, would be about a 7 on a value scale. I liked the contrasting brightness of the silver bowl that reflected everything around it, including me. So I wore something black and moved some things around in my studio to control what was in the reflection. I wanted the single light source to be from my north-facing window, although a supplementary light with a daylight bulb coming from the same direction is sometimes necessary. The point of view is also very important; in this case I wanted the bowl to be slightly below eye level. I use my phone to take photographs to check the placement of blooms, leaves, shadows, compositional lines, gaps, odd negative shapes, tangents, and anything that doesn’t look right. Be patient and deliberate at this stage. It’s more efficient to arrange your still life exactly the way you want before you start painting. Major corrections mid-painting will slow you down, not to mention sap your creative energy. If you’re painting flowers, they may need to be photographed during the painting process because a bloom could assume more beautiful shapes or lose the beautiful shapes it had. However, depending on the flower, they can give you several good days of ‘posing’. When painting, aim to capture first any shapes and colours that might change.
I was sitting when I painted but sometimes when I stand I use a second easel to hold my palette vertically, especially when doing portraits.
Colours and values
Red roses are difficult to paint because when in light and shadow, the value range of the blooms is mid-value to darkest value. So the challenge was to show the lightest value of red on the petals hit by strongest light and maintain the rich red colour. Using white to make a lighter red, I’d get pink and the chroma would be wrong.
I explored all my red paint tubes. I wanted to rank the colours from lightest to darkest reds and warmest to coolest, so that I could determine which reds to select for my palette. I wanted to have a good idea about how I might achieve the rich red colours of these flowers before I started painting. I squeezed out a little of all the reds I have – and I must admit I have probably too many
– I could see that the red paint colours ranged in value from middle to dark and in temperature from warm to cool (far right). The lighter red colours are mostly opaque and often cadmium colours. With this information I could narrow the choice of red colours for my palette. These colour tests will be useful reference going forward. I now can see by brand how the colours and even the paint varies in consistency.
Sandra Corpora is a signature member of Oil Painters of America and American Women Artists. She’s an artist member of the Salmagundi Club in New York and a member of the American Impressionist Society and the Portrait Society of America. Sandra has had many solo exhibitions and shown in numerous museum exhibitions, and she teaches and conducts workshops. Her paintings are in private and public collections worldwide. www.sandracorpora.com