Monochromatic Painting

This was my first home assignment for my Illustration 2 class. We had to place two fruit and one mug in a triangular composition against two black walls and have one light source coming from the front. We used oil paint as our medium on a 12" x 16" canvas (we were supposed to used a 16" x 20" canvas but I didn't have that). We were only allowed to use three colors: Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, and White. It was a monochromatic assignment.

I chose an apple, a pear, and a green mug. I thought they had interesting shapes. I put a thin coat of Burnt Sienna to my canvas. I don't like starting with a white background. I started by deciding where the top of my cup was going to be and placing a mark where the bottom was going to be. I measure point/angles with my brush. As you can see in this picture there are some random little marks around the pear and the cup. Those are some of the marks I made to measure different things. I make a quick sketch of where everything is first. It is very important to have a good sketch of everything. I always measure everything because my eye can see something different than what it really is.

(PS. This pictures where taken with my phone so the quality is not the best. Sorry)

After I have a quick outline of my apple, pear and cup, I start putting my darks (shadows) in my painting. For the darkest parts I combined Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue (Ultramarine blue is so dark- it replaces black). Then I just put a little bit of Burnt Sienna to the other parts of my painting to define the values. At this point I haven't used any white yet.

I start adding white to the lightest parts. Always thinking about values. Sometimes is hard to define values when you are making a monochromatic painting. I was having a hard time figuring out what was darker and what was lighter. I added some highlights to help myself differentiate my values.

At the end I just start molding things a little more. As you can see, I have having a hard time molding that apple lol. I put so much paint that I feel I changed its shape on the bottom right part of the apple. The highlight of the cup is a little too strong. I need to go back and make the cup a little lighter so that highlight doesn't give the wrong information. This is my "finished" piece. 

I took it to class and we had critiques. I need to add more blues to my painting. The Burnt Sienna overpowered the whole painting. I also need to apply more white to define better values. It was a fun assignment. I have to keep working on it as soon as I can. 

I haven't worked with Oil Paint too much and it's been a long time since last time I did a painting. I'm super excited to improve my technique during this semester :)