I picked up a few extra pastel colors at Jerry’s this afternoon, so I was able to work a bit more on pup’s portrait…

My favorite part by far is her nose and beard.

I’m surprised at how easily (and fun) this painting has been to work on. I feel most comfortable working with florals, but I have been pleasantly surprised with the experience so far. In fact, after this one, I will definitely be looking for more dog portraits to complete!

I got an e-mail earlier this summer from a woman who found me through the NCSR where we adopted Riesling. She asked if I had ever done pet portraits. I said I hadn’t but was planning on painting Riesling soon.

I chose this photo…

I need to buy a few more shades of gray to complete this pastel, but I’m please with my initial drawing and progress thus far…

I’m not quite done with the peppers yet, but I thought now would be a good time to add a background.

I started by crosshatching the background with a dark purple color.

Next, I blended the pastel with my fingers to create a more uniform look. I want the peppers to be the sole focus, so I don’t want the background to be too complicated.

At this stage, I added a darker color on either side of the peppers and lightened the top a little to create depth and incorporate the background further into the painting. I also filled in the “red halo” around the peppers.

The painting is starting to come together… all I have left is to refine the red pepper and add some more highlights to the others.

I sat down with my new ball of gray yarn yesterday and successfully cast on a number of rows… but when I went to start my first row of knitting I was unable to see the loops because of the texture of the yarn.

So today after church, I picked up this skein of (easier) persimmon yarn for $1.85 to practice my technique.

Casting on was by far the easiest part. I could do that all day. My first few rows of knitting, however, were a different story.

I have about three rows done, but will probably start over due to a few missed loops in the very beginning. I am getting the hang of the motion though and am still working on getting the tension just right for the size of the needles.

I’m back from our trip out west and worked a little more on my pepper pastel last night.

At this stage, I’ve added more lights and darks to the peppers and I roughed in the table with the muted/colored shadows. I’ve left the pastel marks fairly rough and I am in constant battle with myself whether to blend with my fingers or not. I like the rough look so far, so my fingers are staying away for the time being.

I also haven’t decided on a background color yet. I’d like to keep it simple, so the peppers pop off the page. I’m thinking a value darker than the peppers would be good—perhaps blue or purple?

I won’t be working on these peppers for a few days (as I am enjoying the much cooler weather in Montana), but here is a shot of my progress so far and how my studio is set up.

I have a slanted desk with enough workspace to hold my reference photo and my pastel paper. My pastels are on a folding table off to my right for easy access.

The strip of red paper to the right of the drawing is how I test colors against the background before I put them on the page. Colors look very different on various backgrounds and red can be a bit of a challenge.

And, of course, there’s a towel underneath the desk so pup can hang out (read: sleep) when I’m working.

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!