Still Life Onion the Finishing Layer Demonstration

You've made it! The final layer, and boy are my eyes tired of watering up with all this onion!

Here where we left off. The first color layer completed, most details have been added and some sense of texture has been completed with the addition of some of the highlights.

I start here to put the final background color in one more time.

Close ups of the color laying in.

Dry brush blending completed, and notice the shelf is now blocked in.

I now add a bit more serrations to the onion streaking with a light pink.

I now put in some granite wear and tear. This is loosely done and will be blended out. I also add a touch of the red to the granite to help unify the piece.

A little more work to the red onion.

Blended or softened out with the big dry mop brush.

The white tassels have some firelight reflection added and additional white with a touch of yellow to the front. No open or pure white is used!

And with just a few brush strokes of dark and light, I transform the onion skin to paper thin sheets tearing away.

How it looks further back.

A picture of my pallet with the very few colors used for this painting!

And again, the real beauty of this method. I really didn't like the highlight on my red onion. It made the onion appear square rather than round, so, I wiped it off and did it again!! Compare this to previous photos, the highlight is muted and higher on the left.

And a comparison to the original photo. Again, the technique is not to copy the photo, but use it for important information that your viewer is accustomed to seeing in an onion. Leaving out aspects that are ugly, and leaving what you perceive is the beauty of the object.

Hope you enjoyed this demonstration. Should you desire abit more in photo's or brushwork, try my book. It has a little more detailed information and photo's of this technique that you will find helpful.

"A Real Art Lesson" is a complete workshop manual on this technique of painting. 

Below is the video I made of this and another onion demonstration painting.  It pulls all the images together for you with a bit of background music.  Enjoy!

Click here to return to the Top of Still Life Onions Demonstration.

Click here to go to the Umber Under Layer of this demonstration.

Click here to go to the Dead Layer demonstration of this painting

Click here to see the color layers of this demonstration.

Click here to go to the Finishing Layer of this demonstration.