Chill chilies
Antep aji dome is a variety of bell pepper that's hot. This beautiful specimen was grown by my mom. This photo was taken by me, and I am pretty proud of how it turned out. I’m not even going to try and paint it. It is already a perfect illustration of the lovely chili.
The first freeze has closed out the chili season. I’m not sure how yours turned out, but mine was not great. Mostly because I didn’t get around to planting any. But, trust me I had very big ideas for growing corn and a massive pepper patch in my weirdly long and narrow backyard. All I got this year was a flower pot of Thai chilies (which was still pretty helpful).
My moms chili turnout was awesome. She planted some very cool and strange varieties this year. She has also been canning up a storm. With her home grown peppers she made pepper jam, canned pickles, and homemade hot sauce. All of it was very tasty.
Pause for a food blogger moment:
Pulled pork shoulder tacos (Deb Perelman’s recipe) with my moms aci guayana hot sauce.
Mom’s aci guayana hot sauce on beans and rice. We are burning through it very quickly.
The beautiful chili jam my mom made on the lovely spread my sister in law set up. I grew the nasturtiums (the flowers on the table).
While I didn’t make my culinary or agriculture dreams come true this year, I still have hope for my artistic ones. My mom requested that I do some pepper paintings. I’m not really sure what she is looking for, but due to my obsessive nature, it's coming along nicely and these paintings are pretty much making themselves. So far…
A close up of some bookplate illustrations of the peppers my mom grew. This also includes some I grew and purchased from the store.
The first round of illustration I did was a bit of an experiment. I just want to familiarize myself with the forms and color of the peppers. One image was of some peppers in a Nantucket basket, and the other is of some hatch peppers on the grill (the hatch peppers were from the Wegmans hatch pepper event).
I was happy with the way the Nantucket basket chilies turned out, although they are a little chalky. I used way too much white, and it dulled the colors. But other than that, I was happy with the results.
My 2 complete pepper studies. The top is the hatch chilies on the grill. The bottom is the chili in a nantucket basket.
I knew this would be a difficult subject to paint color and proportion wise, so I traced them from a reference photo I took. This was so I could focus on just color and lighting without worrying about the correct form and proportion (the drawing aspect of painting).
However, this did not save me from my complete failure on my hatch chilies on a grill picture. I know some things that went wrong and how to avoid them next time. I knew this image would be challenging with the lighting, near perfect circles, and straight lines. I think using the watercolor pencils to sharpen up the grate lines and the grill edges was a good idea.
A close up of my 2 images on tracing paper.
Close up of adding pencil to grill image
Not a palette picture from this project, but I just wanted to show you all how messy things can get. Although I wouldn’t call the palette in this piece “chalky”
Although, next time I will actually wait ‘til the painting is dry to add them…oops.
Also, starting with a fresh palette would probably help the painting to not be so chalky. The reference is a photo at night, so there should probably be barely any white in my color mixing.
That being said, I think these 2 are very cute together as a set. Perfect for that food lover friend who can’t get enough heat in their cuisine. Studies like these that are outside of your wheelhouse are really important for personal growth as an artist. In art you will never learn to overcome obstacles if you do not face them head on.
For now, I am going to set this project aside (there is a good chance I might never return to them). Because, right now, I have bigger things on my mind ;)
