Saturday, 19-Nov-11 21:35:00 CET

Heineken beer cap magnified still life

On 10 November 2011 we had a theme evening about magnified still life at Aquarelmere. All artists had been preparing for this evening and found an interesting photo on Internet but I came empty handed. It was not so easy to find a suitable motive.

The community center where Aquarelmere has its meetings there is also a “bar”. I don’t know exactly what the function of this is because it is closed on Thursday evenings. Maybe the place lives up on other days but when Aquarelmere is painting it is an useless unmanned bar. I went on an excursion in the bar to find something to magnify.

In the bar I found the motive: Caps for beer bottles, used crown seals. I rigged this still life in front of me and made a pencil sketch and then I painted it. The Heineken cap had letters and letters are difficult to paint. I could be more precise in capturing the letters but I wanted the painting to be made with few layers, quick and light.

The cap on top of the Heineken cap was matte silver. I had an inner image of a painting style with few strokes and really little mudding around with the paint. I just put down the brush and made the stroke and lifted the brush and that was it. It had to be done in one go.

From a distance the painting lives up. I got nice comments from the other artists at Aquarelmere.

I used Langton paper 300 gr/m2.