This painting is a still life of a basket of colorful summer tomatoes. The basket is made out of the light-weight material used to hold strawberries. This painting captures all the wonderful colors associated with a hot summer day - reds, oranges, yellows and greens. I clipped this photograph from an issue of the magazine Real Simple.

For this painting I introduced a new color to my pallet - sap green. Sap green is similiar to a dark olive color and worked perfectly to help me achieve the color of the green tomatoes. I used cadmium red and cadmium red light (orange) and yellow for the other tomatoes. To achieve the finish and texture, I incorporated liquin in my paints before applying it to the canvas. For the shadowing, I decided against using black paint since the colors are so brilliant. I mixed cadmium red and french marine blue to create a dark purple to use for shadowing and to create the depth of the tomatoes resting on one another.

The red/orange background compliments the entire subject very well. The texture of the canvas plays nicely with the subject. The colors of this painting leap off the canvas and give this small painting a big feel.