Onion Soup - Final

This is the completed painting of Onion Soup, finished in 31st December 2013! The reflections have been added, some details tweaked and a few more highlights added - the only white pastel used in the painting. (The reflections are a result of my use of black glass as a work table for my still life set-ups.)
The finished work measures 16 x 12 ins or 40 x 30 cm and is painted on Clairefontaine's excellent Pastelmat.

“Onion Soup” © Niall O’Neill

Onion Soup 2

This photo was taken on my out-of-date phone so apologies for the quality.
As you can see, the background has been filled in behind and back of the tureen and onions. I can now get an idea of the contrast between the subject and the background, and I am satisfied that the neutral greys that mainly compose the porcelain are adequate to express its white material.
I am almost tempted to leave it unfinished, with just the hint of a sketch in the foreground where the reflections will go. But that is a little contrived, so I'll soldier on - after Chrismas!

Onion Soup

I have deferred finishing the kashkul picture until this present one is done. It's a question of what pastels are on the worktable at a particular time, and the selection that I wanted to use for this latest pastel are staying at hand until I finish (before Christmas) when I will tidy everything away back into its place and pick out the appropriate shades for continuing an earlier work. That's just how I go - not necessarily the best method of working in terms of time and motion, but hey, it's my painting, and my interest waxes and wanes depending on what I find fascinating at any particular moment. Sometimes finishing can be a chore, albeit a necessary one. And I usually get excited nearing the end of each piece.
The Onion Soup piece came about because I have a collection of decorative soup tureens picked up in garage sales, car boot sales or vide greniers/brocantes, depending on your location; the tureens are completely impractical, their only value decorative - and even that is questionable! But they make great still life subjects. So I chose one of the smaller ones, and three onions, for this set-up.

The first image shows the under-painting for the tureen and some finished colours on the left-most onions

Here we have the handle and lid pretty well done, and more under-painting on the body and a pattern emerging on the left. 
Note: No white has been used thus far in this pastel!

Lid and left side of body (except bottom of same) reasonably complete. Colours are mostly Schminke neutral greys, with some Rembrandts stroked in too. I also got to use a lovely pink from my French Artisan Pastellier set.

Jackson's Pastels

Jackson's Pastels are new to me (as of November 2013) are are manufactured by Jackson's Art Supplies. The full set consists of a modest 64 colours supplied in square half-sticks. There is a very useful range of neutrals in grey and in earth shades; two rather day-glow shades of pink and orange respectively; and a set of blues and greens that includes shades for blue and turquoise seas. When I checked the catalogue the full set appeared to be retailing at an astonishing £7.95 - at that price they are perfectly pitched at the beginner who wants a decent range of colours without breaking the bank. This set retails at the price of about 3 full sticks from the main pastel makers. I have given them a brief trial, and they glaze well over existing layers on paper such as Canson Mi-Teint Touch. They are much softer than Nupastel, and harder than Blue Earth - somewhere in the region of Rembrandt perhaps. There is no colour chart, so I have photographed the set for posting here. I have no information on light-fastness or pigment to binder ratio at this time.

Jackson's Pastels

Kashkul 3

More work has been done on the bowl, and the cup and fallen fruit are connected now by the shadow of the negative space between the objects. The colour cast is due to this photo being taken in a different light to the previous one.

Kashkul 2

Not a lot of progress to report on this. Some work done refining the fruit in the bowl, and the fallen physalis near the goblet is established; also some lines indicating where the base of the bowl will be painted.

Kashkul

The initial drawing for this painting is in the previous post. Here I have started to develop the fruit (physalis,  or Cape gooseberries) in the begging bowl - or "kashkul" as I have discovered.
Technical note:The ellipse that forms the mouth of the brass cup was carefully calculated and drawn using a loop of string and a template.
I knew what the long axis and the short axis of the ellipse needed to be by scaling a photograph of the set-up to the required size and measuring it. I then applied a formula to those measurements (it in not difficult, but you can go to this website and use the online calculator: http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/scol/callipse.htm)

First of all, to draw an ellipse with a loop of string, you need two foci (F21 and F2 above). Place pins in these foci and measure the string so that the loop is twice the length from F2 to X  - this length will equal the sides of the triangle from F1 to Y to F2 and back to F1. (The short radius "b" is the distance from the centre C to Y; the long radius "a" is the distance from C to X, and is equal to the distance from Y to F1 - or Y to F2!)
Loop the string over the pins in the foci, pop a pencil in and stretch the loop fully as you draw, and you will get a perfect ellipse.For the pastel, I drew the ellipse on a spare piece of card, carefully cut it out, and used the card as a template to draw the ellipse on the support - it's safer and more accurate than drawing directly on the support.

Initial block-in of cup and fruit was done with a selection of pastel pencils, both CarbOthello and Derwent, and a few Rembrandt sticks.