Flowers Tablecloth Bread and Cheese

This is for Studio Atelier Apr/May 2012 still life challenge. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

When I first saw this challenge (ref), I thought this was such a daunting still life challenge, with so many objects in the photo. However, I liked all the colors in the reference photos, including the tablecloth, and the arrangement was very interesting, with the colorful (flowers and table) vs. the neutrals (bread and cheese). So I decided I would give it a try.

I wanted to keep most of the elements, as I thought many of them were interesting. However, I wanted to refocus the eyes to certain objects while de-emphasizing others.  The obvious choice to focus the eyes first would be the flowers, especially the yellow dahlias. I placed less emphasis on the sunflower, the lily flower buds, and the yellow flowers behind the sunflower. I couldn't completely discard the bottle of wine and the grapes since it would make the left side of the painting too empty, so I kept them, but made them to have similar values as the background to send them to background. I dropped a couple of things from the original photo: the wine glass way on the left as I thought that added nothing to the painting, and also the grass shooting out from the vase since I thought the arrangement was already busy enough. I also skipped the background blackish fabrics as well since I thought that added nothing as well to the overall composition.

The tablecloth looked a bit scary to paint at first because of the intricate design. I painted big blocks of colors, but using the same colors that appeared elsewhere in the painting in order to tie the whole thing together: blue from the background, yellow and orange from the dahlia, red from the tomatoes.