"Blue Towels" by Diane Ezer

From the Artist: I was trying to portray a basic representative likeness of a couple of rolled up terry cloth towels, one of which is in a metal bucket. It's on a mantelpiece for the simple reason that I live in small apartment and this is the only place I can set up things to paint!

I used cobalt blue, white, and raw umber to gray the cobalt blue for the towels. I tried to vary the "blueness" in the background patches: the section in the frame was originally a purple made of cobalt blue and madder but I decided that it detracted from the point of the exercise and I wanted to see what would happen if I added another type of blue, so I covered that over with a light blue made of ultramarine blue and white.

The section of the wall above the towel on the ledge is a slightly greened cobalt blue and white. I feel I had less success with conveying the metallic quality of the bucket, but I'll keep trying.

From the Painting Guide: Metal can be very tricky, not least because of the colors reflected in it and to avoid it looking dull gray. I think what's in the painting is very effective. It's got a sense of it being metal and the reflections in it, giving an interesting shape to the composition without dominating or distracting. I wonder whether, given the shadow behind the towel in it, there would be a darker shadow against the wall at the base of the bucket?