Peppers

I am happy about this drawing -- I corrected the lines as I went, and felt that I had done a good job of capturing the shapes of the vegetables. I decided that I'd better scan it before painting it, in case I screwed it up later. The lines are darker than in reality:

What is it about red? First I had a problem getting the tomatoes to look right; the red pepper was even worse. I like the way the yellow one turned out, though:

In September 2004, I had tried painting a green pepper for the first time. It has a certain tortured, expressionist look to it, for which I feel a certain fondness. I've gotten looser since then, and more in control of colour and the watercolour medium:

It's a little teapot

It's supposed to be pewter, but it might be better if I call it china, since it looks nothing like metal. The teapot, that is. I painted it without doing a pencil sketch first, and I did four versions on a large sheet of good Arches paper (that's my preliminary sketch in my notebook underneath). This is the last and best version, with a bit of blue glass from #1 on the lower left, and an unfinished window shutter from an abandoned picture floating in the upper left.

My father bought the tea set when I was a kid - just the small pot, big enough for two cups; and handle-less sugar bowl and creamer. They were very modern at the time, and I've always liked them, even though the pot is too small for more than one person, and I'm too lazy to get it out just for me. But being pewter, they're dull, with that buttery pewter glow; and people think that they're silver and that I'm slovenly and haven't bothered to polish them.