mirror

This piece’s process was different from most of the others I had made. Regarding the composition of the painting, I had set up the different objects as per usual, but I would also be painting a self portrait by using a mirror rested behind the objects and against the shelf. While I had experience in painting portraits (and even self portraits), I mostly used photos to reference for this. A mirror meant adding depth and employing some imaginative filling-in-the-blanks.
I remember the glass textures had been really fun to paint, like the green segments of the bottle and the kaleidoscopic geometry of the vase. Capturing transparency is one thing, but painting the stem of the flowers through textured glass was a really interesting challenge.

My teacher often says that he wouldn’t want someone to compliment his work by saying it looks like a photograph; realism isn’t necessarily art’s golden standard or the hallmark of good art. When art is incomplete or painterly, it’s sort of exciting and intriguing, especially to the modern eye. He also notes that we don’t exactly perceive things in the way that photography captures images. The eye focuses on certain things in clear detail, while other areas of our vision are peripheral and softened. Photographs flatten a 3D subject into a 2D space, but paint is a little more dynamic. It’s like building up the medium’s layers forward, towards the viewer.

I really like having a balance between sharper shapes or details and letting others stay untouched or less “fleshed out.” For instance, I left the back of my canvas and parts of the easel super transparent—you can actually see pieces of the canvas showing. I also really liked how I left the flowers (which were real!) really soft, and didn’t try to render the spiraling folds of the petals. This really enhanced the sharp visuals of the glass bottle and vase adjacent to it. Contrast!

using the mirror!

the painting setup