Still Life with Yellow Fabric

(2019 vs. 2023)

This still life work, one of my first chalk pastel pieces completed in 2019, was a life study exercise to train my arm extension proportion measurements and color theory; my pieces were previously black and white in mediums of graphite or charcoal. In 2023, I decided to retouch this piece, a means of measuring my improvement in color theory, perspective, and light/depth. Rather than recreating the entire arrangement, I reworked the objects one by one, isolating them in front of me and adjusting the lighting to match that of original. This process exercised my ability to see light in my previous painting and execute it again through rotating the object and maneuvering the lighting angle. As you can see, I emphasized the contrast in the red glass bottle and created more dimension in the round object on the right. In the fabric, I added more tones, with cooler greens and warmer reds to emphasize the turning of the fabric away from the light. All still life objects in the piece, even my signature in the bottom left, demonstrate my evolution as an artist over the past three years.