Diana Probst, Cambridge Artist

Still Life, Roses and Reflections: Day 9

still life work in progess, showing half painted fob watchToday’s painting was the hardest so far, for two reasons. I had to paint ellipses with complex parts, and my shoulder really hurts. Precision in painting comes at a cost of sometimes maintaining stress positions, and lately I’ve been getting a touch of RSI. I’m seeing someone about it, but the process of healing it is loosening up muscles and I’m having to train others. I’ve therefore been trying not to keep up weird positions, and so today I moved the canvas around instead of moving myself around. Putting the painting horizontally to look at it helped me a bit with assumptions about round shapes, but it was mostly for the sake of my skeletal health, so I have rotated the picture of the watch so you are seeing it as is, not as painted. I chose to use pure ochre as the main colour, to differentiate this from the copper. It’s darker than the original photo, and I’m looking for a rich gold effect, rather than the paler original.

The finished day’s painting had everything covered to at least one layer, including the coffee pot and the watch face. Tada!

Still life of roses, reflective surfaces, and cloth