Marble and Mason Jar Paintings – Still Life with Marbles and Glass

Sometimes I just like to do a thing…but sometimes only once. I ran a marathon back in 2001 and didn’t run again until this year. A while back I wanted to challenge myself to paint glass…marbles and mason jars at the top of the list since I just happen to have a ton of those around. They do take me a really long time…because I tend to work and rework until all the proportions and distortions look right. Here’s the first marble painting I did:

A quick little video I took while working on it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Ashley Hackshaw (@lilblueboo) on Oct 8, 2018 at 2:16pm PDT

Another in progress. I use lots of thin layers of acrylic paint to create the distortions in the glass:

The finished version:

Here’s another one I started…it’s not quite finished yet. I do tend to start a lot more paintings than I finish. 

Whenever I have fresh flowers I put a few in a mason jar and take photos so I’ll have references to paint from. Here are sunflowers in a jar:

And a few more. 

People ask how I get so detailed. I try to work on a small a section at a time. It helps to have a digital photo so that you can zoom in and lose the whole perspective. Then it’s just about painting small shapes! Here’s a photo I took of the jar:

Zoom in a little bit to see the jar closer:

Zoom in even more and it becomes more abstract and you can see actual blocks of color! 

Going through the rest of my paintings to see which ones I haven’t shared yet!