The Texas-based mixed-media artist, Polly Jones, paints the loveliest fruit still lives. I absolutely adore her use to color, texture and unexpected pattern. See her wonderful work here.
It had been a long while since my adults painted a still-life, and it was definitely on my bucket list. Rather than go for the usual, boring academic version, I thought I'd spice it up and use Polly Jones as our inspiration, while introducing some new media, some new techniques and a mixed-media twist.
Materials:
Acrylic paint
White gesso or primer
Wood block or acrylic/mixed-media paper
Texture or thickening paste
Paper scraps (book paper, news paper, dotted paper, atlas paper)
Palette knife
Brushes in various sizes
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| Teacher sample, work in progress. Day 1 |
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| Teacher sample, final. Day 2 |
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| Day 1: pencil drawing and college |
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| Student work in progress |
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| Student work in progress |
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| Student work in progress |
- Students chose a Polly Jones painting to take inspiration from, or they made up their own still-life.
- We painted on thick 8x8 inch (20x20 cm) square wood blocks and primed these with white gesso.
- We lightly drew out our composition in pencil.
- We pasted a few bits of paper into our fruit composition. Our approach was to paste paper wherever there is a deep shadow, or where you want a bit of texture or interest to show through after painting. For this, we used cut or torn dotted paper, book paper and atlas map paper.
- We began painting.
- In areas where we wanted extra texture, we mixed some modeling paste (you could use any kind of texture paste) into our paints. We either applied this with a brush or a palette knife.
My students were very pleased with their results. These small format little works of art entice and pleasantly surprise the viewer with all their unexpected textures. The wood grain of the wood block, the bits of paper collage and the modeling paste all worked together beautifully to result in interesting, unexpected, delicious and summery fruit still-lives.
Thanks for the inspiration Polly Jones!
