I painted this tool once before and you can read about its significance here. This time I reversed the hammer’s positioning so that it faces the other way. This created a pretty cool looking cast shadow caused by the split between the hammer’s claw. Often an object’s cast shadow becomes an equally important part of the painting’s composition.
I like painting hammers for several reasons:
- They contain a good balance between metal and wood. Which are currently my two favorite things to paint…especially tarnished metal and dented, scratched-up wood.
- They are fairly easy to draw out during the beginning stages of the artwork. They don’t contain any pain-in-the-neck components such as screw threads or ultra thin parts such as fishing hooks or fishing line. They also don’t have any overly symmetrical parts like some of the horse bits I paint. All these attributes greatly extend the amount of time I would have to take to draw and paint the still life item.
- They sell. Call me shallow or even a sell-out but I like painting things that sell. Selling artwork is not the only concern of mine when I choose my subject matter but it is definitely part of the equation. Nothing’s worse than having a basement filled with artwork that is unsellable.
So there you have it folks. Another oil painting of an old hammer!
What do you think?
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