Painting Peppers

The fresh peppers in the market were so beautiful that I decided to paint them using a secondary color palette for brighter blends. At first I tried a composition that looked ordinary.

So, I pulled out a DVD by Jean Grastorf, “Creating Texture in Transparent Watercolor” by North Light and used her technique with washable tape. After doing a light sketch on the 140 lb Arches cold pressed paper, I covered the entire sheet with overlapping rows of tape.

Once covered, I use the roller to seal edges and then the cutting tool to cut out shapes. It is important to remember that the cutouts become the color and the taped areas remain white paper

Happy with the first cutouts, it was time to add some colors fairly concentrated in a medium tone. Once dried, I did some more cutouts remembering to secure the edges with the roller.

Now the tape was peele off carefully after everything was dry to reveal all the whites that were left. Now the original sketch was brought forward and colors added to reshape the white spaces. I did this for 2 paintings, “Inspiring the Mexican Hat Dance” and “How Peppers Get Hot” now on my website.