"Red Cherry Peppers 3"

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"Red Cherry Peppers no.3"

5 x 7 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

This is the third of the last painting of the red hot cherry peppers series.  With this painting I wanted to deal with edges and how to manipulate them.  I enjoyed bringing the intense reds out and making subtle shifts of values.  

I started with raw umber on the brush and no medium to establish the drawing.  After the drawing was done I started on the middle and darker values of the first pepper.  I used ivory black, cad. red, and cad. red light.  

Then I added the lighter values to the pepper using titanium white. I went back with the colors I used for the middle values and softening the edges to the lighter values.  I also added the stem first with the darker values and moved towards the lighter values, I used ivory black, viridian, yellow ochre, cad. yellow, and titanium white.

I started on the second pepper with the lighter middle values, I wanted to start with the strongest chroma of the painting.  Then I went into the darks afterwards using the same palette as I used with the first pepper.  I'm being careful with the subtle values between the darker and middle values.

Then I added the stem starting with darker values and moving towards the lights. I also used the same mixture as I did with the previous stem.  Then I started on the third pepper, again starting with the darker values making sure that its taken to a complete finish before moving onto the next section.

Then I added the middle values which was tricky to render, the subtle value shifts between the darks and middle tones are very slim.  Then I added the lighter values which are the highlights, using the same mixture as I did with other peppers.  I've also started to add the darker values of the stem.

After the stem was taken to a finish I started on the darker values of the wooden base, I used ivory black, cad. orange, and burnt sienna.  Then I added the lighter values of the base with burnt sienna, cerulean blue, and titanium white.

I added the background using cerulean blue, naples yellow, and titanium white.  When adding the background I started to soften the edges of the peppers that were furthest away from us.  Softening the edges made the peppers go back in space and bring the front pepper forward.  Edges are important to understand, learning when to use soft and hard edges can make or break your painting.  This is the finished picture, I hope you enjoyed this one thanks for stopping by.