How to Add Life and Color to Your Paintings

Some paintings just flow from one's brush and are finished without much trepidation and search. Other paintings, actually most paintings go through significant changes before they are finished. Very often you feel you are done with a painting, you put it aside and start something new. 

Then after some time, usually several months the painting catches your eye and you as a painter know that you have to correct or add something. Even though this slows down the completion of a painting (and oil paintings do take time to dry), it's very rewarding to improve something, to make it more beautiful and in line with your esthetics. 

Most of my small still life paintings were painted alla prima in one sitting from a set up in a still life class at the Arts Student League of New York. My goal was to capture the colors and forms correctly within a short time frame. They were finished after each session. 

After some time in my studio I realized that some of them could be improved and brought up to the level and the look that I try to accomplish with my paintings in the studio. Whether it's the change of color or addition of a line or a pattern I feel like these small paintings represent me as an artist today more than when they were originally created. I love bright vivid colors and different patterns so that's what I focused on while improving them.

Here are some examples of before and after some transformations took place in my studio. I hope you find these examples informative and interesting.

“Lime and Plum”, oil on canvas 12” x 12” . I intensified the pink color and painted a stripe. The stripe adds a contemporary feel to the painting as well as leads our eye to the interesting contrast in the background.

“Cups and Glass”, oil on canvas 12” x 12”. I brightened and deepened all the colors and added a pattern to a cup. The darker background draws more attention to the cups in front.

“Cup, Flowers and Apple”, oil on canvas 12” x 16”. The painting had light pastel color scheme. I brightened colors and added polka dot pattern and pink flowers to give this painting more of a spring feeling.

“Green Apple and Blue Ribbon”, oil on canvas 11” x 14”. I changed some colors making them cooler and added a bright pink to complement the greens as well as additional blue stripes to the background. The green apple stands out more now against the dark eggplant swatch of color and the complimentary pink.

This still life was painted in my studio during several sessions from my own set up and I was happy with the result and thought it was finished.

After a couple of months, the painting caught my eye and I just felt that adding blue lines would make this still life painting more successful - more colorful and bright and somewhat abstract and more contemporary which is how I like my still life paintings :).

Please check out my paintings on my website. Thank you!