The second painting I liked was Wilhem Claesz Heda, 1635, still life of oysters on a plate, shells, wine goblets and jugs of all shapes and sizes. The tablecloth is scrunched up and almost iredescent looking. The painting is also triangular in shape, though a lopsided triangle, created mainly by the various jugs & goblets, and one which is tipped over helps move the eye through the painting. The highlight of this image is the half-peeled lemon which is hanging over the edge of the table - a splash of colour and beautifully painted too. Here is a link to an image of the painting.
My own still life attempt here is naturally going to be a little simpler than those mentioned above! I decided to use some fresh vegetables on a simple tablecloth on our table. I set up my camera with quite a wide angle to take in most of the table, with a bit of the edges showing, possibly not quite ideal but ok for the project at hand. I set the camera to b&w and I found it really helped with my analysis of the images while I was shooting - easier than looking at the coloured objects on the table. The shapes and patterns started appearing as soon as I placed the vegetables on the table. The brief said to "avoid regular shapes" but I found this difficult because the eye is naturally drawn to regular shapes, anyway, I tried to make it look interesting. It was amazing to see how minor changes could influence the look of the image so strongly. I took about 35 photos but have selected just 9 to write up here.
Photo 1: A leek and pepper on a table... looks like an implied triangle, with the base of the table forming the base of the triangle.
Photo 2: Oh I like this one... the Kholarabri (middle) looks like a lady crossing her (many) legs! The rest of the setup isn't terribly interesting at this point.
Photo 3: Moved the larger object (Kholarabri) back, and the tomato forward. There is still an implied triangle but also some tension between the garlic and tomato (they are both small point-like objects and I really see a strong line between them in this image).
Photo 4: A bit busy. The garlic and onion are very close together , the pepper and zuccheni align to continue the triangle theme. Not much structure though in this shot, it is starting to look a bit crowded.
Photo 5: A bit of rearranging results in a some clearer shapes, or groupings of shapes. The kholarabri is too much, with its foilage, so I will remove that. The three small long things are a bit all together, too much reinforment of a line. The sweet potato, garlic & onion are just a bit random on the edge.
Photo 6: Potato replaces kholarabri and struggles to fill the space.
Photo 7: A semi-circle centered around the potato is formed but the pepper joining up with the zuccheni (courgette). The onion, carrot & garlic are forming a little triangle at the front centre, and the right hand side still needs some adjusting.
Photo 8: I adjusted the front triangle slightly to point the onion around to help with the triangle, moved the garlic closer to the edge of the table (to emphasise it a bit more, I love garlic), and adjusted the carrot slightly too. I also gave the RHS a bit more space by moving the sweet potato back, but I feel as a whole the group has not come together quite right yet.
Photo 9: The finished masterpiece! I removed the sweet potato as it wasn't adding much, and decided to make the leek the real apex of the image by pushing it further to the top of the photo, and giving a little more space for our small triange at the front. The right pepper and tomato align to form a line and also the side of the large triangle, the semi-circle is smoothly round and is centered on the potato without it being pushed to the edge. The small triangle at the front is not perfectly arranged hence keeping some interest there. All in all I like it! I think this meets the brief of being a group which hangs together visually but is not too obvious.
Sketch: An attempt to show some of the lines that relate the objects and some of the basic shapes that are formed. Triangles mostly, but also the semicircle pulling in to the potato.
An interesting project which has kept me amused for the whole evening! It was fun to try a still-life set up and move the various objects around to see the effect. I can see how people started making flicker movies by just moving one small thing at a time, my vegetables look almost alive when I flick through all the shots taken! I think the end photo is quite interesting but not too obvious, though I did have some of it vaguely in mind before I started.
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