Hanging Around
Artful Upcycling
Hanging Around is an 18-inch round oil painting on wood panel, framed with sleek metal elegance.
The inspiration for this piece came from a sun-fried outdoor clock. I hate generating more junk for landfills and saw that the perfectly sound frame just needed a painted panel to turn it into a unique artwork.
Being a realist painter, I am a fan of trompe l’oeil work which seeks to create the illusion of 3D objects. Suspended grapes, which are a popular subject matter for these paintings, took the spotlight for my new project. As you can see from my reference photo setup, I used an old cutting board as my backdrop and spritzed the grapes with water to give them a dewy freshness.
As the painting evolved, capturing the cutting board's intricate grain with its countless shades of tan, gray, and brown, made for a surprisingly complex challenge. I originally captured the shifts of color made by spray bottle on the cutting board, but in the end, I opted for a more unified tan background that wouldn’t compete with the subject matter. I was pleased with the final result, particularly the realism of the different shadow tones against the grain.
Early on in the development of this painting, I realized it wasn’t going to be a true trompe l’oeil. Can you tell why from the photo of me holding it? If you guessed it’s because of the size of the grapes, you’d be correct. That would be one freakishly large grape cluster in real life!
Given the frame's circular design evokes a wine barrel's top ring, I could imagine the painting adding a touch of class to someone’s wine cellar.
