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’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 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!

Two of my paintings are currently hanging in a PSNC member show in Chapel Hill. We have many talented artists displaying artwork, most of which is for sale, so check it out if you are in the area.

The address is 2551 Homestead Road, Chapel Hill, NC and the show runs until September 20, 2007.