"Oil Lamp Study" by Charlotte Coven

The most difficult parts of creating this piece was creating the detailed reflection pattern in the bottom “bowl” section of the lantern. This was the area that I knew was going to be the most challenging area of the subject, so I ended up spending the majority of this painting's creation on this area. I basically divided up the sections that were apparent in this area of the lantern, placed highlights right next to said lines to that they’d be visible, then continued to add in all the reflections in a “color by number” fashion. I added these reflections section by section and constantly referred to the reference to make sure that the most notable reflection shapes were apparent in my piece. The easiest part of this painting was lighting up the whole painting with an overall wash of light gray. I didn’t recognize that it was too dark overall until my professor told me, so I think I improved it at least a little bit with the wash. As always, I had a very frustrating time with the glazing portion, but I think it was a good idea to put a minimal amount of glaze here.