HEB Cupcake #2

I am fascinated with pastries, well with food really. It's just so interesting, the look, the smell, the emotional load, the seductiveness. I could practically break into song here , Food, Glorious Food!

Chiles, Cherries

I have been watching reruns (Netflix) of the PBS Art 21 series and came across one of my favorite contemporary painters, Susan Rothenberg. Among many other things, she talked of

dirtying up colors on purpose, particularly whites, which she is famous for. Her remarks helped me think of white differently and to let go of the need to preserve a clean white, but to get right in and grunge it up. Still it reads as white. This photo can't get all the varieties here, but it is a more interesting white than I've been able to get before. And the darks are darker.

Early Tomatoes

Red underpainting on this one, no white show through specks as before.

Progress.

Plate of peppers

Here is what I learned with this one: I usually tone the canvas before beginning the painting, but this time I was in a hurry, so I just got to work on a white panel. Those little specks of white are the canvas showing through. I thought that I always covered up the entire canvas, and further, that the toning color only muddied my paint if I overworked it, which is often. Or even mostly. But now I can see that an orange wash on the canvas would have added to it, made the overall color better. Hoisted by my own petard.