News from the potatoe front...

Surprise... more potatoes!

... quite literally (because last time it was one lonely potatoe. Now the spud brigade is marching in in full strength - well, four is a crowd or such?) Well, I'm really tired, as are my jokes I guess after this really intense and exhausting day. But I - must - post - to - blog - otherwise - lydia - will - out-post - me - again!


So the key thing to learn in a still life with more than one - erm - potatoe, is to make them sit properly in space, to create the impression of depth. All the tricks from the last potatoe post still apply, only now there are several. So, start by blocking out the group-shape. Then after the individual shapes are sorta defined, there are some of the same tricks as described for making the shadow under the spud. Only the trick is tweaked for making correct shadows between the various potatoes.



So to do that you look at the edges where one potatoe becomes another potato, so to speak. Determine, which side of the edge is the lighter one - act accordingly. If you need a shadow (dark area) work pretty much like with the shadow on the single potatoe - make the strong line of darkness and then work the potatoe shape into that shadow area. It's really exactly the same idea, only now there are different levels of darkness because you are casting shadows on the other potatoe, for instance. Rinse and repeat for all edges. Then do it again because you probably messed up the lightness values somewhere. It's fascinating that if you keep doing that you actually get a decent looking still life. We didn't have to make a dark background today, but I did anyway.

Overall I"m not super happy with the outcome of this one. If I have the time I might take it out again next week and fix a few of the things that bug me. I'm too tired to photoshop my copyright into all those images, so here they are just like that for a change.