Peppers study at the Bath Artists Studios

A few weeks ago I went painting with the Bath Painting Group at the Bath Artists Studio for a still life session. It was fun and relaxed and I did two small paintings on the day:

Red Pepper   10"x8"  oil on board

Here is the group, well focused:

I always choose an easel as close as possible to the set up to get most of the colours and values right, specially when it's a small still life like this.

My palette is always messier when I paint from life as there is that feeling to try to capture things quickly and spontaneously. It does look like the paints had a fight here and it all ended up in a blood bath - don't you think:

After an hour or so working on the first painting I moved on to the next pepper-model who was posing like a star to get some attention. I don't recall ever doing yellow still life before (for some reasons I tend to do mainly white, green and reds) so this was a good exercise and lot of fun too.

Yellow Pepper   7"x10"  oil on board

You can see my ridiculously minimal sketch above the painting - I just wanted to get started with the paint really: