"Bell Peppers" -- oil on canvas panel -- 15x15" -- Margie Guyot

After weeks of painting the winter blahs (or, as we used to call them, "the sour owl"), I was gunning for something very bright and yeowly. Actually, this is even more bright in real life, but it was very dark when I photographed this (without flash). The peppers were easy, but the cloth they're sitting on is really tough to paint. It's a deep fuscia brocade that reflects into the bluish/purplish tones. Red paint, even though I own probably every shade they make, is very hard to recreate all the colors, due to the physical limitations of the paint. To get this very intense shade of the fuscia, I ended up putting down several layers of "Aurora Pink".

I live in the Snow Zone in NW Michigan, where we get snow pretty much every day. So it really is exciting to paint bright, screaming colors now and then. After the last painting experience, setting up in the middle of a howling snowstorm on the edge of Lake Michigan, holding onto my gear so it didn't blow into the lake, I decided it was time to spend a bit more time in the nice, warm studio for a while.