“Patient Peppers” Still Life Painting

"Patient Peppers" still life value study

Although these peppers are waiting patiently for color, they are unlikely to get finished. I did this piece with oil on gessoboard as a still life value study. My primary concern was trying to set the values of the orange, yellow and red peppers appropriately. It was a “valuable” exercise and I feel that it really helped me translate local color into values that harmonize with the composition as a whole. Although you would not gather from the initial posts to my passions blog,  my current interest is in painting landscapes. Despite that, I feel that these exercises will help me analyze compositions in the field. After all, we are only just painting abstract shapes regardless of the subject matter right? I am still working to wrap my head around this one but I do feel that attention to the abstract forces us to think about design at a higher level. Now just to get better at it!