Tag Archives: Still Life Oil Paintings

Roses and Strawberries

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Roses and Strawberries from My Garden 8×10 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Each season while my roses and strawberries are in bloom, I photograph them and use them as a reference for a new painting. I’ve done this for the past 5 or six years and I can honestly say that it has not gotten easier – and it may never. That’s okay. My roses have so many densely “swirling” petals, as I would describe it. In theory, one is suppose to simplify the form based on highlights, middle tones and shadows, but in the case of my roses the petals are so thin and tight that I’ve never been able to substantially simplify the form. Overall, I like the shapes and colors. Below: I created a master study this past week as well.

Portrait Painting by Valentine Serov. 8×10 Portrait Study by Winifred Whitfield

I didn’t attempt to truly complete the reference image but I did enough to serve the purpose of doing such study. The reference has been in my studio for several years awaiting my attention. I liked the block of differing broken color in the upper area of his painting. I m always challenged by backgrounds and this is an approach I will try in my paintings. That’s pretty much the point of painting master studies – paying attention to how the masters painted and resolved their paintings. The artist Modigliani often did broken color blocking as well. He’s another of my favorite artist. My interest in this painting actually stops where that white fabric of the lower skirt starts. I probably should have ended my painting effort there. I found the bottom of his painting not particularly interesting and that white of her skirt distracting.

THE RESISTANCE: Tomorrow, May 14, 2025 should be the greatest protest demonstration against this administration we’ve seen. I believe there may well be millions of democracy loving individuals who take to the streets. in my opinion, Donald is the most corrupt, cruel, and criminal person in this country with his power amplified by virtue of the immunity granted by the Supreme Court. I want to vomit at the thought of the military parade tomorrow. I won’t watch it, of course. I’ll watch coverage of the new Pope and the many demonstrations. It was interesting to see how the media, and Twitter was used to amplify the California protest as justification for calling in the National Guards and the Marines!. It’s the first time I’ve so clearly seen that maneuver, though I think it is used regularly. And of course Donald is grand standing and telling lies to make the protest appear larger and disorderly. For sure he created a distraction which took the ELON attacks largely out of the news. Having hired half of Fox “News”, in his cabinet, they all are skilled at changing media focus. Gavin Newsom, however, has done a great job in fighting back. Stay safe tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day! Winifred

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Boots Made For Walking

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Boots on Blue Oil Painting 11×14 by Winifred Whitfield

Above you see the final painting of my boots but not necessarily the version I prefer. I found my boots in a box a few months ago. I hadn’t seen them in years. They’re so comfortable and they’re my go to boots for running errands – along with my bright red Pumas. Today is the day following my completion of this painting above and it’s the first time I compared it with the previous version which I over painted – see below.

Colorful Boots 11×14 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

The initial version is very colorful. The brush strokes are expressive. I hadn’t been so “correct” about everything. My brain thinks “it is messy”, I couldn’t handle it and found it a bit too chaotic. I considered this initial version “failed”. That was OK with me. All painting practice is good – just making an attempt is fine. At the point of my “failure” I thought I would try some things. I darkened the background, toned down some of the color and “corrected” shapes within the boots. I didn’t realize I was killing this more exciting painting. The past years of my brain training makes it hard to appreciate random expressive brushstrokes and bold color. I try from time to time but it’s a struggle. My training is portrait realism, though increasingly I add a bit of expression and creativity “around” a face. I tried expressiveness “on the face” once” and posted it. It’s awful!.

I like the final painting, the bluer one at the top – but I find it less exciting. This experience has been important for me and I’ll continue to attempt to push past my limitations and the discomfort I feel when things are not “correct”. It’s sad for a painter to feel that way. Correctness might be important when assessing a realistic portrait but not BOOTS! I took many photos of my boots posed differently. I’ll likely try to paint them again in a different pose.

RESISTANCE: Oh my gosh! When do we get a break!! So far the Supreme Court and other Federal courts are barely holding together the provisions of the Constitution, although it is the Supreme Court which has gotten us into this mess and Garcia is still not back. Fortunately many others immigrants have been saved from deportation without “due process”, at least for now and Trump is pissed. Significantly, Donald’s ‘Big Beautiful New Deal” also failed in committee even before it could go to the House which saves Medicaid, which provides care to “the most vulnerable amongst us” ie, food and health care to children, medical care to people with extraordinary medical conditions, and medical care for the lowest income population and Veterans care as well. We have such immoral leadership in the Republican Party with Donald’s attempt to eliminate this level of support so the richest people in the world and large corporations can have more is IMMORAL – PLAIN AND SIMPLE! The reason Donald’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which he insisted it be called – didn’t get out of committee is because of the RESISTANCE throughout the country. Republicans from some districts know their tenure would be over in 26 if they did not vote to save Medicaid. 5 Republicans on that committee voted with Democrats providing a vote of 21against the bill to 15 which closed it down. I am thankful for those 5 votes. Between the Supreme Court ruling and the defeat of this bill he wanted to pass desperately, this was not a good week for Donald. I think he’s still smiling, however, because of the prospect of a $400 million luxury plane from Qatar. We’ll see. His lack of morality has no bound but then what would one expect from a criminal. This is what criminals do. Bye for now. Winifred

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WW Haitian Girl Winifred Whitfield Still life WW Red Tree WW Fall Maple WW mom-child WW Portrait S ww-portrait-A

Bowl of Fruit

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Bowl of Fruit Painting 9×12 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Still lifes are not particularly exciting for me to paint – though I paint them. Painting still lifes is good practice, however, because of the varying shapes, textures and colors involved, along with the challenge of complex composition. Painting still lifes actually helps in painting portraits. In fact, painting in any style assist with painting any other style. You can look at this painting and see all the separate elements I had to paint. There were decisions and layers of brush strokes involved with each item.

I’m working up to the 10,000 paintings said to be necessary before one can expect to claim “mastery” in oil painting. I’m still under 1000 paintings, so I have a ways to go. It’s time for another portrait. Have a wonderful weekend. Winifred

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WW Haitian Girl Winifred Whitfield Still life WW Red Tree WW Fall Maple WW mom-child WW Portrait S ww-portrait-A

Little Round Things

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apes White Cloth Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

What a journey this painting has had. It was intended as a little practice exercise – to paint something I would not particularly care about. To allow that the painting would not be “precious” as they say, allows one to be more comfortable experimenting – such that what or how one paints just doesn’t matter. So that was my mindset which carried throughout the painting process – as you will see. Below is the reference image – a little yellow plate with grapes on a brown surface.

Grapes – Reference Image.

Below is a crop from my initial painting of the plate and grapes.

When I stood back to look, it was apparent I was doing my same old realism and I didn’t want to do that. So, I scraped the paint off the plate. I think it’s rather pretty but I wanted something different from just pretty. It’s getting less hard for me to to paint something relatively well (the plate) and then decide – NO – scrape it off and try again. I maintained the grapes throughout. Below was the next attempt.

Grapes on Blue, Winifred Whitfield

Above, I painted over plate and the background and started adding random colors. Again, I decided NO and scraped off the paint. Then I decided I would approach it differently. I would find my little yellow plate and set up what would be a background and table covering and work from this structure. Below is that photo of what would be my background reference image:

Yellow Plate with Background and Table Cover

Above: I thought that having this reference would assist me with what I wanted to accomplish. I found a piece of stiff cloth I like to use because it will hold stiff folds. It’s actually a piece of house painters floor protective covering which has vinyl on one side. I set the little yellow plate on it – no grapes – and I photographed the plate against the cloth which gave me a reference background and table covering. Below was my first attempt using the reference to form my background.

Grapes on Tan Cloth

Above: Rather interesting colors and shapes but not what I wanted. Here again, the plate shape is painted with a sense of realism reflecting of the original shape than I wanted, if not the color. Thus, I’m heading down the wrong path again. I struggle with this. Below, I try again.

Grapes with zig-zag background.

Above: Not so bad except that the color turned to mud because I hadn’t sufficiently dried nor scraped off the tan/gold paint you see before it. This time I would allow it to dry over night and reapply cooler paint colors during my next paint session. Below- the final PERHAPS.

apes White Cloth Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

In actuality, the light colors in this painting are very neutral – not so warm hued as they appear in this photo of the painting. (It could just be my screen.) I intensified the grape color, added deeper reds to the grapes and added a couple additional grapes as I always enjoy doing. I admit I never took the grape stems too seriously. I succeeded in a looser background with lots of texture, random abstract strokes and lots of energy. The background is not necessarily pretty but it’s not BORING. That’s important to me. To have energy and not to be boring was my only objective for this little exercise – which turned out NOT to be such a “little” exercise. In keeping with the intention to not make this painting “precious”, I’m going to sand down the background as soon as this painting dries more. I have found that the result of sanding a painting during the painting process or after, most often enhances the painting. It allows some of the underlying colors to come through and it affects the edges in some way. I expect it to become more interesting. I’m not sure what will happen. If the results are particularly interesting I will show you. If you actually made it this far – thank you for sharing this journey with me. Winifred

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WW Haitian Girl Winifred Whitfield Still life WW Red Tree WW Fall Maple WW mom-child WW Portrait S ww-portrait-A

Making New Stuff

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I’m going to explain what I’ve been doing. It’s been fun. I can’t use solvents in my studio and the use of solvent in oil painting is part of the traditional painting process. It’s used for brush cleaning, to create a thin wash to work out the values of the painting or to paint the first layer with a thin wash of color and to thin oil paint throughout to one’s desired consistency. Mixed with oil paint, the paint dries faster. Sometimes a solid layer of the mid color of the painting is applied overall to the surface and shapes are wiped out to create initial shapes in the painting.

Fruit Bowl Practice Painting Original Painting by Henri Latour.

for these reasons, I feel a little handicapped in not being able to use solvent. Many people can’t use it. There can be an allergic reaction which causes head aches, nausea or whatever. The adverse reaction can develop over time. Some of these products are odorless – which I think is a terrible thing. You can’t even tell if solvent is building up in the studio. Without going too far into this. I heard someone mention an alternative. The suggestion came from a very experienced oil painter who post lots of technical info on YouTube. He said †hat for quite a while now, he has used a watercolor wash as a background or first painting layer. Originally he used Acrylic. It “dries” quickly, but the fact is it should cure for 1 to 2 days before painting on it in oil, so he changed to watercolor. So, I decided to try watercolor A normal person would likely have tested this process using watercolor from a set they may have at home, or might purchase inexpensively on Amazon. Not being a normal person, I decided I would make a set of watercolor colors – specific to what I might use for subdued background colors. I probably looked at 30 YouTube videos to learn how to make a watercolor binder. The process is more complicated and requires more ingredients than in making oil paint which I’ve made for years. The other thing is that after grinding the watercolor it has to dry which can take 2 to 3 days curing before using the product. I guess you don’t have. to let it dry but its harder to control the amount on the brush if it’s wet. I initially thought I would make 3 colors. however, I made 12. I couldn’t help it. I had the pigments already and in fact, I had all the ingredients I needed – gum Arabic, glycerin, honey, and clove oil. There are many recipes which can affect the functionality and artistry of watercolor. It’s been fun to learn about which is why I couldn’t get a painting done last week. I spent days studying, and days making the watercolor. I could have gone a much simpler route but I really enjoy making stuff. For my purpose they’re fine. Whether or not they’re really any good – I have no ideabut they will work for me.

Then I selected a painting to test my new watercolor as a background and an initial wash.The painting was interesting to copy. It’s not really a copy but I certainly copied many of the elements from the painters work. I like the fact that I used bristle brushes only. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. In addition to creating texture which I love, it keeps all the edges soft. I’ll have to try that with a portrait. Actually, I did use a small sable for those delicate little champagne grapes. I then added a border and allowed a couple pieces of fruit to roll out the frame – something I like to do – most often with grapes.

Professional WC is most often in very small containers. My watercolors are large allowing me to insert a large brush into the containers for large strokes rather than small sable brushes most often used in WC painting. Notice my name is not on the painting. I don’t think the artist would like his name on it either. Well, that’s my story. Have a great weekend. Winifred

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Beauty In All Life Phases

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Sunflower Skeleton 12×16 Oil Painting bt Winifred Whitfield

Unlike with most flowers, I’ve always enjoyed the many phases of life of the sunflower and I have paintings which reflect this. However, I didn’t have a painting quite like this. While going through my files this past week, I came upon this reference photo – I knew instantly I had to paint it. I’m not sure you can tell exactly what it is. It’s actually two large overlapping sunflower heads. All the petals have fallen off and it’s large sunflower seeds have begun to dry. I love the “curls” and the way the light is hitting the dramatic shapes. At 16 x12 , this painting is relatively large and has tremendous visual impact and presence.

I hope you enjoy it. Have a wonderful weekend. Winifred

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Peony Buds

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Peony Bud Bouquet in Decorative Pitcher – Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

A couple weeks ago a friend gave me a large beautiful bouquet of peonies from her garden. There were pink peonies with a light yellow centers and even larger white ruffly peonies. I began photographing them right away. I knew I would select a reference image from them one day, when I wanted a very complex and difficult image to paint. I continued to photograph the peonies as the petals wilted and the bouquet grew smaller. The pink flowers with yellow centers wilted first, days later, the white ruffly ones lost their petals. Thereafter, only white buds remained until one of the buds, began to unfold as a small flower. The buds and young flower were originally white but I wanted a different look and feel hence painted them pink and lavender colors and added the small decorative pitcher.

The peonies have all faded now – until they come again next spring. I am happy I captured the many stages of their life in photographic files, in addition to these two oil paintings as memories.

The painting below reflects the last of the larger white peonies and some of the remaining buds. (The pink flowers with yellow centers are not represented in these paintings).

Peony Flower with Buds Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

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