Red Grapes
Suspension and Impermanence
Red Grapes is a 16x20 oil painting on wood panel with black floating frame. There is strong negative space in this trompe l’oeil with the cast shadows anchoring the illusion.
One of the more famous practitioners of trompe l’oeil was William Harnett (1848-1892). The 9x12 black and white value study I did in the photo here is copied after his 1886 painting, The Old Violin.
Inspired by Harnett and learning from Hanging Around , I sized these grapes accurately. I also realized I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel creating the illusion of a wood panel when I could just leave the actual wood panel alone and paint the grapes on top. In this sequence of photos, you can see how painting progressed.
First, I gessoed the area of the panel that would be grapes or string only. Then, after sketching out my guidelines with charcoal, I used transparent browns to render the shadow areas against the wood grain. Then, from dark to light, I started bringing the grapes to life. It looks a bit in the right-hand photo like the grapes are covered in snow, doesn’t it?
After I completely covered the canvas, the grapes were veering towards blue-purple — which would fine for concord grapes, but that’s not what these were. I corrected the colors to be more infused with red, which is what you see now in the final product.