Still life preparation

I'm going to publish a few blog posts before we start the course in order to take you through some of my process when painting a still life, including wrong turns and dead ends.

This unsuspecting plastic punnet of peaches seemed like a reasonable starting point and so I began to block in the negative shapes around it before moving on to develop the forms.

OK so far, although I realise that I've fallen into my usual trap of concentrating too much on the peaches to the detriment of the composition. Although I'm enjoying playing with the textures and shapes on the peaches, they have become surrounded by a sea of grey which does anchor the punnet but has little visual colour interest.

I often get to this stage of a painting where I regret not thinking more about the reason for choosing the subject matter in the first place. I love to play with the way objects emerge from their surroundings but I'm finding it hard to make a painting of it, where all the areas of the canvas work together.

Join me next time to see what happens to the peach punnet. I can't guarantee success but it won't be for lack of trying!