Its been really tough to beat the heat this past week. The recent rains down here in the valley brought the humidity up and the mosquitoes came out. During a recent trip to HEB, I decided to treat my wife to a bottle of Coca-Cola (bottled in Mexico). I think it’s her favorite soft drink. Hopefully the conditions in Mexico will change in the near future and I will be able to buy her more than just 1 on days like this. Anyway, after she finished the soda, I confiscated the bottle. I had brought home one of my failed paintings from the studio and I thought this would be a perfect way for me to beat the heat (after so many days of being indoors I needed a project to work on).
I started by painting the entire background with yellows, orange and some white to brighten the center. While this stage of the painting dried I practiced drawing the bottle and working with the colors of the glass using colored pencil. Once the canvas dried I used a green watercolor pencil to sketch in the shape of the bottle. This would allow me to wash away any mistakes and the pencil would blend in with the acrylic as I paint in the shades for the glass. To create the glass I started with mixes of green and yellow; carefully leaving areas of the background intact to create the sense of transparency. I used white to emphasize the reflective qualities in the surface and added spots of deep blue/green to bring focus to the thickness of the bottle. Painting the label was pretty straight forward ( after placing a white edge I coated the label with a mix of crimson red and orange; once dry I added several layers of white to bring out the lettering). The final touch for the bottle was a thick coat of gloss gel, I applied this using a brush and only in areas where the glass was present (leaving the label flat).
This was a fun project for me and it gave me ideas for new projects to work on in the coming weeks/months.
Acrylic on Canvas 18×24.
