Red & White Bobber - Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

4" x 6"

An artist friend once told me that the process of creating a painting is nothing more than making a thousand decisions. Some paintings might be more and some less. I'm going to use this bobber as an example of making decisions while painting. The decisions for this piece most likely only number in the few hundreds but neverless I'll describe a few of the most obvious ones. It was strongly lit from one side which creates different shades of color all around a spherical shaped object. There are reflections from the table and background that I could see in the unlit area. It has rust stains all around it toward the top side. The stains were caused by rolling around inside a wet metal tackle box for years. Since it always rolled the same way the stains made perfect circular lines around the white side of the bobber. The cast shadow was darker in the center and got lighter toward the edges and the highlights had to be placed correctly or the entire illusion of a round plastic bobber is lost. These are only some of the most obvious observations I had to make to finish this painting. It is always amazing what you can see in even the most simple objects when you really see the object and don't just look. This is painting 251 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold.