It is time for the grapes of autumn, my favorite being Muscat. the problem with grapes is that you don’t keep track of how much you eat and before you know it you have devoured bunch after bunch of sugar! That is exactly what happened to me when painting this still life. This little painting is 15×20 cm and is available on my website, Ronell van Wyk
Bowl with grapes,
15x20cm, oil on board
Cup and rose
oil on board, 20x15cm
Mustard pot and red onion
oil on board, 25x20cm
Paintings available on my website Ronell van Wyk.
Every year I paint my paintbrushes intheir copper containers and every year I say the same thing: that I want to replace the copper bowls with stoneware containers, simply because the copper is too high maintenance.But once the copper is cleaned and buffed, I succumb before their splendour and so the paintbrushes stay in copper containes yet another year.
This second sketch was done in 2016, also of my copper containers.
The Iceberg roses(fee des neiges) are still blooming profusely with a few white button dahlias alongside. Even though I brought A stm or two insife to the atelier to paint, I wanted to portray them as if still in their natural environment…a corner of the rosebush.
Three white roses and a dahlia in oil.
oil on linen, 30x30cm
à bientôt
Ronell
My art project for February is oil paintings. I find February the most difficult month of the year. It is usually very cold, rainy and grey, and the worst of all, windy. So it turns put to be the month I spend inside most of my time, painting wise. I usually turn to watercolor work, or drawing, both of which I enjoy. But this year I am taking out the oils in February.
..pomegranate in blues..
oil on linen, 27x29cm
I have bought a lot of small canvases on which I intend to do small and quick stillifes, not a formal, still life set up, bit more single pieces of fruit and vegetables, objects from the kitchen and refrigerator and veggie basket. I am awful at doing still lifes, I have done only a very few oil still lifes and I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. I find still life too static for me. I have no adrenalin pumping when doing a still life…there is no changing elements like wind or changing light or heat or movement which prompt me to work loose and fast and prevent me from fiddling. Standing in front of a stillife gives me too much time to fiddle, to much time to stand back and contemplate what to do or change, too much opportunities to return to the work and “fix’ what I don’t like.
..pomegranate in greens
oil on linen, 20X20cm
These little paintings are exercises in different strokes, using different sizes of brushes and techniques and rendition in everything BUT realism.. All of them are done in one go, painting wet-in-wet, impasto, sur le motif, in my atelier. After the third one, I actually started enjoying it. The first painting was horrific..I was so not in the mood for this project, but I didn’t want to fail, so I put 3 pomegranates up on the table, 3 canvases on the easel at the same time and painted all three at the same time. That turned out to be not too bad and I started enjoying it.
..pomegranates in yellows..
oil on board, 33X22cm
So, back to the easel where I have a fennel bulb waiting with its greens and whites and yellows…challenging!
à bientôt
Ronelle
With this second attempt at an aquarelle still life, I didn’t to set it up the still life. I only painted what was in front of me, which was my copper pots filled with brushes and other art stuff. I moved the objects a little to avoid “kissing” and to bring them a little closer. the apple that rolled to the side, was left as it found its place and I was very chuffed with it!It might be overcrowded for some, but I rather like the idea…in any case more than a composed and deliberate still life. Maybe it is a mirror of my life…anything BUT composed and deliberate!
… stil life with copper pots…
..in watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper CP 30.5×45.5cm…
…and a close up of my strokes and layers. I still feel I overworked it and could’ve let go of the brush much sooner..
Africantapestry 