Starting the Peppers Painting

Today was a fantastic day; what terrific weather we're having!  The joys of living where we do . . .

This morning I had to paint.  Of course, had I been really wise, I would have painted outside and taken advantage of the fine sunlight, but you see I have this photograph of peppers . . .

They are too beautiful to pass up!  I had worked on the background for these beauties earlier because I wanted to experiment with layering the washes.  If I manage to do it correctly, the background will be a very rich color.  Of course, as it turned out, I didn't know anything about the transparency of various watercolors, so that idea is all shot to heck already!  Oh well, just remember that as usual you are going to be seeing a work in progress - which is one reason why one side of the plate's edge is shaped and the other is not (frankly, I forgot that bit) and yes, I made it more oval than round.

No, it isn't Christmas!  The backgrounds will eventually be a very, very dark and rich red, and the "table" will be a green so deep it will look black.  Today I laid in the base colors of the peppers and they look very raw, don't they?  Not the peppers (they were raw when I took the photo) but the colors.  I was most interested in getting the shadows on the plate, but that didn't work too well.  The yellow pepper and its shadow are too close in color right now, and I never added the shadow under the purple pepper.  It looks as though it's floating above the others.  Also, I don't think I managed the washes on the plate very well.  Those washes I'm still trying to get a handle on; it's so unlike the way I work with oils.  

All of which is making this a challenge, and I consider that a good thing.