New Painting: Part 1

I am almost  finished another painting in my series of fruits and vegetable kitchen art. This new one features strawberries. I used photos I took of strawberries on my counter this past summer. 

Sometimes I use tracing paper to sketch out the drawing so I can get the shapes and composition precisely  how I want it. In this case I knew exactly how I wanted the composition and there wasn't much room for error on this smaller  6 x 6 inch canvas. After chalking the back of the drawing and tracing my drawing on to the canvas, I got to work painting.  Here is the work in progress:

This is what i call the ugly stage.  Not anything to call home about….yet.  : )  The strawberries are based with the midtones, with some shadows and highlights.  The leaves need tweaking because the shape of the leaves is off. The strawberry caps need to be painted and the highlights/shadows adjusted.  Stop by tomorrow and see the finished painting.  It looks a lot better than this!