Aurora Borealis; A Bold Bowl Painting

I've been down in The Dungeon working every day, nearly seven hours a day on this painting since my last blog. It's dimensions are 36 inches by 24 inches - a vertical.It took two days just to set up this still life; determining shapes, colors, values, lighting and most importantly what I wanted to paint. Of course, I wanted to paint the bowls but within that subject there is always a little something that catches me and makes me want to paint every day. In this set up it was the reflective colors contained in the bottom dishes. Those colors reminded me of what I imagine the Aurora Borealis to be - colors of the strange magnetic atmosphere bouncing around the sky at the top of the world. Hence the title of this painting. Visually, in my determination, it is those reflective colors that ties it all together.

Then I took a good day to draw it all out and determining the actual composition as it sits in the rectangle.
Then I finally got to paint until I finished this morning.My studios is a mess with gobs of red paint on the floor. I need to do some cleaning up before I start the next one.

Again, my apologies for the surface "blotchiness" in the image here. It's the oils on the painting drying at different times. When the painting is entirely dried, I will apply the varnish. That restores the juiciness of the original paint application. When I get the varnish on, I'll do a post showing before and after varnish to demonstrate the difference.