Gold and more gold

10x8, oil on canvas

I have this collection of French pottery that I really like, but it is brown. No getting around that. Here are a couple of pieces. The squat piece with the top I found out by watching "Downton Abbey" is for salt. I saw Anna get it down from a kitchen shelf and I was blown away that there was my piece of pottery, of which I did not know what the original purpose was. You learn something every day.  I inherited these three pieces from my mother. The tall skinny one I think is for olive oil or wine, but that is just a guess. The short little pitcher is actually from Spain and it is for olive oil. I had first thought to use the wall as the back ground for this still life. After doing the block in I changed my mind and put the gold doll screen back there. It does add a richness to all the earthen colors.

Blockin using wall as backdrop

Now I am not sure the gold screen was such a good idea. Maybe too much of the yellow and orange and brown going on. I did that color scheme on purpose working with the repetitious shapes. It might have helped to switch the pear with the clementine. (Pardon me while I think aloud here). I did use different browns in the pottery; ie more blue in the salt cellar, more orange red in the olive oil pitcher,  and a mahogany for the pipe bowl. It is hard to see all the subtleties with the glare on the painting. That is a problem with photographing wet paint,