Still life, fabric theme

Continuing with still life studies, here are some paintings of various types of fabric from around the condo. The first one is an afghan blanket made by my late Nana using crochet, its brown with yellow and cyan patterns. Since yarn uses similar types of dyes, I could match the colours using pigments such as burnt umber (PBr7), orange-yellow (PY110) and cyan (PBr7). Painting fabric feels inherently chaotic due to all the undulations and textures, but the final results seem to be rather peaceful. In the background, I showed a stack of recent paintings, with the intense sunset over Lachine canal on top of the pile. 

Crochet afghan brown yellow cyan, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is a tea towel folded up, it is cream-coloured with magenta detailing stitched in to the material. It looks to be machine made, although the magenta parts may have been hand stitched or done with a sewing machine. Being mass produced, it had tight texturing and clean lines. To do this, I painted out an outline of the undulations, applied the body washes including shadows, then over-painted the magenta and cream fabric textures. In the background is a kitchen table chair and some water containers I use for location painting. 

Tea towel cream magenta, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Trying a different type of fabric, here is my neon vest with reflecting strips running down the back. In reality, it is spattered with mud, but I liked the clean aesthetic of this painting, it looks like the day Cilei gave it to me as a gift, new and clean. If you try to paint things like this at home, it may feel like a huge technical challenge. Its been some time since I did fiddly studio paintings, but with all the location painting lately, I felt like my brush work improved tremendously and I had no trouble identifying hues and values. It was fun to try and figure out ways to depict various types of fabrics, perhaps I will do more in the future, although, I have a different idea for my next set of still life paintings, wont spoil the surprise. 

Reflecting vest neon grey, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025