I got a few peppers at the farmer’s market last week and before roasting them, I set them up in various poses for a potential still life. While looking through my studio today, I found some wonderful “poppy red” paper that would be a wonderful base for my three peppers.

I usually work from high quality photos that I take myself because my studio space is small and unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of room for elaborate still life set-ups.

My first step is to block in an outline of my subject using vine charcoal. This way I can make mistakes and redefine edges without leaving hard to remove marks behind.

Once the basic layout is done, I start blocking in the color. I use a mid-range red, green, and yellow respectively to fill in the general shapes of the peppers…

At this point, the peppers are merely identifiable blobs of color. But stay tuned for the next step, adding the lights and darks!