Chrome/Silver/Gold

PAINTING METALLICS

I thought a lesson on metallics would be a good follow up to glass. While glass has both reflection and transparency plus distortion, metallics have mostly reflection with distortion.

OBSERVE:

Look at yourself in a spoon. If you hold it upright looking inside it, you'll see your own image elongated and distorted. If you look sideways into it, you'll see yourself  wider. You'll also see yourself upside down. 

Look at the backside of the spoon. Here you'll see your reflection very large in the center and becoming tiny further along the edges.

For this "simple" lesson, I used indigo, quin gold, burnt umber, and French ultramarine. Instead of indigo, you can use neutral tint or a gray mixture of your own. If you don't have quin gold, use a warm yellow with a bit of burnt sienna in it (or quin sienna). 

Here is the reference. After studying it, I realized that part of what was being reflected was me taking the picture with my cell phone! No wonder it looks concave instead of convex. The colors green and blue appear at the bottom edge of the spoon. These are reflections of the trees and sky on the opposite side of the spoon. 

Notice the handle of the spoon does not reflect any of these colors. It is made of a "buffed" metallic that reduces glare, so no reflections.

Line drawing. Don't go by my line drawing though. Going by your own observation will be a lot more effective.

First, I used indigo to paint the background. When it dried, I painted in the shadows. This is being a little more careful than I normally am, so that the shadow in between the fork tines is right. 

The important things in painting metallics are these: 1. Leave whites for sparkle; and 2. very darks against very lights create feeling of shine.

Then I painted in the pure color of any reflections, in this case, blues and greens on the bottom of the spoon. Those reflected colors should look clean, not dulled.  This particular spoon handle is not shiny and reflective. I just gave it a wash of indigo. I used a little blue on the shiny parts of the spoon. 

To finish the spoon, I worked in several glazes of indigo, adding a little French ultramarine. The main thing is to observe where your high lights are. Put your darkest darks next to a highlight. (Look for where the spoon is picking up the light source. If it is at the bottom of the bowl of the spoon, the top will be a little darker; if the tip of the spoon is picking up the light, the bowl will be darkest).

For the gold fork, do the following:

1. Lay in a pale wash of quin gold, leaving bits of white. Dry.

2. Apply a heavier concentration of quin gold on the tines, and drop in a bit of burnt umber along the edges of the tines. Paint the handle, a section at a tme, with heavier quin gold, then, while wet, use a thin brush to paint the curve line on the handle. Do that with each section, so that one edge will be hard edged and the other will blend softly. 3. When dry, paint the dark shadows of the fork with burnt umber.

(A substitute for burnt umber would be a dark mix of French ultramarine with burnt sienna or burnt orange)

4. I ran a small brush of burnt umber along the edges of the tines and side of fork to create the edge of the fork.

You may need to lift some highlights if you've lost your whites, or you may want to retrieve some pure whites with gel pen on some of the tinier spots.