Chrome!

I am a bit behind with my postings and this posting is about stuff I have created over 2 weeks ago. There is also another decent piece that I create the same week and I'll post about that some time soon. However, after that, it went only downhill (see next posting). Work became totally crazy and unpleasant you cannot make art when you are under pressure (except when you are a printing plate). But I'll talk about that next time. Now for more positive stuff.

A bit over 2 weeks ago we did still lives with a chrome toaster. I created two "showable ones" of these and here they are. The first one has a bit of a blue tint. Let's just say that's from "Andreas' blue period" ;) It looks decent exactly as long as you haven't looked at the second one I did...

The other one, though, turned out pretty nice, especially considering that this was done relatively quickly. The fruit in the still life still leave a lot to be desired... maybe I should put potatoes next to the toaster as I seem to have a better feel for those...?

One of the intersting lessons I learnt from the chrome exercises is that you really need to tone down the whole piece a lot. Only then can the strongest highlights really do their magic. And when you put a strong highlight on at the end, then these highlights have a tendence to "float" in the image, as if they are not really part of the object. So you have to "anchor them down" into the object. And the way that is down is to brush (with a dry brush) from the darker area bordering the highlight into the highlight. But not from all sides, but from the two main sides of the highlight. So if that is a reflecting edge on the toaster, you'd brush in from the left and right sides of that highlight along the edge (as seen on the 2nd toaster)