Half Pint Jug #2

This small work (7" x 5") is a painting of a small half pint copper jug done from life. The work is coloured pencil on smoky blue Canson Mi Teintes. It's being added today to the Small Works Gallery on my website.

One of the challenges of this piece has been about getting this very old copper half pint jug to gleam without looking too shiny or bright. I also found that I could see more and more colours as I looked at it and it has been a pleasure to tease out all the different hues. I've been surprised by the quantities of celadon, aqua, blue, violet and magenta and variations on these colours that I've added into the painting to achieve that copper 'look'.

As is my usual habit, I've also used many of the colours I found in the jug and the plate in the background - but in quite different quantities. I find this always helps to unify the painting as a whole. It stops the background looking as if it's not really part of the painting - a fault often found in paintings where the background has been added in at the end rather than being an integral part of an image which has been thought about from the outset.

My jug had already acquired a rather interesting set of dents (on the other side from the one seen here) when I bought it at a small dealers in Suffolk some 25 years ago and I'm planning another view of this once I've worked out how to get it lit.

art , coloured pencil , painting , small works , still life painting