This is a quick oil sketch of another in my growing collection of cute little bottles. The bottle is not cone shaped – it’s triangular (obviously!), but the base is almost rectangular, with slightly tapered ends – technically octagonal, I suppose. I hope that came through in the painting, but I’m not sure.
I did this a few months ago, purely as a speed exercise. I wanted to see if I could complete a painting in an hour. I think it took slightly longer than that, but not much.
What’s good – I was fairly pleased with the colour of the glass; it really is quite green. And I like the lip of the bottle, and the cork.
What’s not so good – The background! I was focusing on getting the bottle done in a short time, so just slapped down a reddish colour as background, thinking that it was a near-complement to the greens and might make them pop. To some extent I think this worked, but there’s just way too much of it with no variation. And the highlights. After seeing Jeff Hayes’ beautifully coloured highlights, I would look a lot more closely at them.
