A Pair of Pears

Yay! First piece of the year!

My theme for this piece was "pairs."  I doodled in my sketchbook for a bit, trying to think of things that come in pairs... eyes, ears, hands, feet, shoes, pants... I was feeling a bit uninspired.  And then it hit me: why not paint a pair of pears?  I've always loved puns, especially really terrible puns, so it was perfect.  I printed out a bunch of pictures of pears and even stared at a few real pears for a while, then did a few sketches.

Playing around with the composition... and with my new Prismacolor woodless colored pencils :)

.... And a few more.

These pears are shaped funny.  Whoops.

I experimented with the colors of the bottom two pears, using normal colors on the left pear and their complementary colors on the right pear.  It made me remember that not all pears are yellow or green... so I decided to make a yellow pear and a red/purpley pear.  At this point I also decided to use oil paints for the pears on these cute little canvas boards (each 5"x7") I found in the bottom of my art box.  So I did a couple studies...

...And remembered how much I've always wanted to try painting on a black background.  So I busted out my new oils and started painting!

A Pair of Pears

I painted the yellow pear first and was sooo happy with how it turned out.  My topic for this piece is "form," so I had a lot of fun putting in the shadows and highlights to make the pear look more three-dimensional.  I actually didn't use any black paint (besides the background of course).  Instead, I used purple for the shadows in the yellow pear.  The purple pear was a little trickier.  I figured out that some paints are not as opaque as others, and those colors don't show up very well on a black background.  I had to play around with adding white and other more opaque colors to make the purple pear pop.  (Thanks for the tips Mrs. Rossi! :)) Also, blending and mixing and layering is a lot different with oils than with acrylics because oils take a really long time to dry.  I haven't had a ton of experience with either, but I think I prefer oils.  I tend to work pretty slowly, so I get frustrated trying to go back and change acrylics when the paint is already dry... and they make me feel like a "real artist."  All I need now is a beret and a palette with a thumb hole.

Overall I'm very happy with the way these turned out.  Who knows, maybe I'll paint some more.  I'll have pairs upon pairs of pairs of pears :)

P.S. I'd like to give a special thank you to Rose Datoc Dall-- Her figure drawing/oil painting workshop at SVU this summer helped me overcome my fear of painting with anything besides watercolors.  Y'all should check out her website and her blog. She's the best :))