Coffee for Two

Coffee For Two 

Oil still life 8x8 palette knife painting

A trip to one of our local thrift shops was the start for this painting. I enjoy looking for simple colorful objects to mix up and place into a still life composition. The blue green coffee pot and the green blue cup were perfect foils for the red apples. I began the painting with my brush and quickly realized that the subject was looking and feeling a bit staid, unexciting. After I scraped off the thickest paint and basically got back down to a toned ground I began again. This time I used one of my palette knives to carve out and delineate the shapes. The knife restricts detail to a minimum and helped me to focus on bringing energy to this ordinary still life. Then my subject became a means to convey the luscious paint strokes, the “frosting” on this “cake”. I think the fact that I was having more fun played a role in the success of this little one.