In painting class we just finished up our "5 Object Still Life" project. The goals to this project were to pay attention the lightness and darkness, and to how light is shown on 3D figures. A constraint to this project was out palette. The limited palette we used only consisted of black and white oil paints. The support we used was paper with a gesso ground. While I worked on this piece I learned that light creates different types of edges. For example....light that shows on top of the cube-shaped figure will not bend around the side of the figure, it creates a hard edge where there is an instant contrast in the shade. Light that gradually gets further away from the light source creates a soft edge, meaning the lightness and darkness blends together. The soft edge can be seen in this piece where the shadows fade away and blend in with the light. Final improvements that I made on my last revision were to make the shadows darker as they got closer to the objects. This makes the overall portrait look more realistic, as if they are actually sitting on the table rather than floating.
