Tag Archives: food

Annual Peach Challenge

Posted on by
7"X5" Oil on board

Every year I seem to need to torture myself by trying to paint peaches. Maybe if I painted them every day for a week or two, like Julian Merrow-Smith, I would eventually get it right. As it is, I fuss and worry at it for an hour or two and finally give up and call it done. The one in the background gave me the most trouble, for some reason I couldn't seem to maintain the volume.

Anyway, as usual I spent most of the day painting the house. It was the porch floors this weekend. I really am almost done. Maybe I will get some gardening done tomorrow, thank goodness for civic holidays. one of these weekends maybe I will actually take a day off.
Posted by Picasa


Tomatoes

Posted on by


8"X6" Oil on board

Another glorious day. I sat out on the porch again but this time attempted a still life. I used to do a lot of these food paintings but they have lost their flavour for me :-).

We don't have any local tomatoes yet, these are the hot-house variety. My plants are big and very healthy, so I should have some of my own before long.
Posted by Picasa


Backlit Mutsus

Posted on by

7"X5" Oil on board I should know better than to start a natural light painting at 4:30 pm on All-Saints Day (right after the clocks have gone back). The light had gone long before I finished.

I am a big apple fan and Mutsus are among my favourites. J. went out and bought three bushels today. They should last for a while if we can just find somewhere cool enough to keep them.

Posted by Picasa

Stripey Squash

Posted on by

7"X5" Acrylic on board

Not a great painting day. I decided that I had been doing too many paintings from photographs and that I needed to do a still life. However, I think this is one I should have saved for the oils. Also I should have given more thought to the composition, I was in too much of a hurry to just get something done. Never mind, it is all grist to the mill.

Squash & Jug

Posted on by

5"X7" Oil on board

Sorry about the bad photograph. I finished this late and had to use artificial light. The white balance can be adjusted but there is no way to get rid of the reflection.

I am not sure what kind of squash this is, some kind of Hubbard I think, but a gorgeous deep orange colour. They are very tasty.

Posted by Picasa

Bushels

Posted on by

6"X4" Gouache on paper

My muse has deserted me. I haven't been able to do so much as a sketch all week. The fact that I am in a race against time to finish painting my house (as in gallons, 3in brushes and ladders, not tubes, brights and easels) before the weather puts an end to my efforts for another year, drove me to try something different today. I don't use gouache much and I am not good at leaving well enough alone. I try so hard to keep things loose but only the constraint of time forced me to finish this one quickly.

Tomatoes, bushels of them keep on appearing on my back patio. If we all pitch in we can usually process a bushel in under half an hour. This fills a 20 litre pot which then needs to be boiled down for several hours, stirring all the time. When the sauce has reached the right consistency (i.e. it can't be boiled down any further without catching on the bottom of the pot) it is cooled, bagged and frozen. we usually do 15-20 bushels each year and this keeps us in sauce until next tomato season.

Posted by Picasa