Building form and background space - #64

The Bean Jar

8 x 10

oil on canvas panel

This week's challenge is inspired by my recognized weaknesses in the larger painting that I did these past couple of weeks.  I want to understand how to keep a background from becoming flat, maintaining depth and interest, while at the same time improve my building the form in the objects of the still life.  

In order to make myself not immediately get uptight and perfectionistic, I'm declaring all of them sketches.  I even started with a 3 value sketch in paint before moving to color.  

The panel was an old one, being recycled, and already had the yellow seen in the background.  I tried to stay loose and focus on pulling the form out, rather than carving it in carefully drawn lines.  The finished result is definitely a lot richer than I would have expected in a 2-hour sketch!