you are what you eat.

Today I stayed with the chilli/lime theme and did my profile pic. There was no way I was going to be able to do an actual self portrait, so hell, might as well be silly.

ingredients

Two of my current favourite ingredients. Well, even though that is true, I also cheated a bit; ginger should have been in here but I didn't figure it would look good. Also, there are other times when potatoes or something equally dull looking are my fave ingredient, and I probably won't paint them. I should look out for nice aubergines though.

I stoopidly put these on a plate, and then immediately lost the shape of the thing. I don't mind my lime actually, and the bottom chilli has it's moments. This was done in extreme haste as I was just back from a horrid two hour dentist session and was getting sorer and sorer as the numbness wore off.

curry for dinner

I popped over to the local veg shop and came back with a huge leafy bunch of coriander, a juicy hand of ginger, shiny green limes and long deep red chillies- I love that, a big bag of ZING -  I'm more and more interested in cooking limey/zesty/fiery/fresh food these days.

The chillies were crying out to be painted, and I'm not utterly disapointed with the result. I like parts of this, and am cross about other parts.  It's amazing how just one little brush stroke can either make things right, or make bits fail. I suppose that's part of the challenge. I'm still loving trying though.

spring and sun and daffs

Glorious sunny spring day, did hours of gardening. The few daffodils I have looked beautiful in half sun, half shade, so I murdered two and brought them inside.

I knew once I started attempting things that need to be drawn properly that things would go very wrong, et voila! The bottle and perspective, and curves and straight lines, and all that are wrong, but... I kinda like this. I'll call  it naive. It took me absolutly ages to try and get blues sorted a bit. An environmental crimes worth of paper plates was used up in the effort.

Back to peppers

I don't know why I went back to peppers, I think I was doing better with the tomatoes.

This seems to me to be a step backwards. The brushstrokes aren't strong enough. I had problems with the light: the painting was taped onto the kitchen cupboard, but there wasn't enought light on it. I wasn't really able to see the colours properly, and therefore kept chopping and changing, hence the busy scrubbiness. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

Tomatoes two

The first of the Isle of Wight tomatoes are in, I think the tomatoes we have eaten for the last few months have all been from Sicily and Spain, so it's nice for some reason to see the first English ones.

Well the tomatoes may be deep , dark , and delicious looking, but this is dull dull dull. On one hand I'm still quite thrilled that any of these pics arent entirely disgustingly ghastly, but... on the other... 

I'm disappointed at the sludgy green/grey/godknowswhat background colour. The tomatoes are I suppose tomatoey, but a bit bitty. I can be very hesitant about where to put what brushstroke, I think it shows. Big confident boldness would be so much better. 

Early days , ho hum.

Onwards and upwards - tomatoes!

The peppers had given their all, but luckily some nice big toms arrived in the veg box. The process seems to be the same each time: huge excitement and anticipation, followed by muddled , dejected middle, followed by attempt to retrieve seemingly lost cause.

 I'm sort of pleased with this! I'd go so far as saying I like it. They do manage to look like apples with tomato tops though. The colour here is a bit different than the real thing, actually, all these pics look better on the screen than in real life. I need to work on tone, I can't seem to decide what should be how dark, if that makes sense. I also need to know how to mix good dark darks.

Again,  an hour and a half, but too much of that is faffing: looking for bits, taping things onto kitchen cupboards, finding the lamp. I've missed lunch again and am famished, maybe I should eat the stuff rather than paint it.