Inspiration in the produce aisle: Cherimoya

         

8 x 10 , Prismacolor colored pencil on Strathmore vellum bristol (click to enlarge)

The cherimoya. The custard apple. 

Or, as described by Mark Twain: "...the most delicious fruit known to men...".  

A woman saw me eyeing these in the produce department of my grocery store (which has been carrying an amazing selection of tropical and exotic fruits). She asked if I was familiar with them, and we struck up a conversation. She told me of their wonderful aromatic, creamy texture inside, adding that they are a favorite in her homeland of Chile. That description—along with the fact that they reminded me of artichokes and pinecones—was good enough for me. I had my next "model".

While they look like overlapping scales, the little surfaces of the cherimoya just join together along their perimeters, with no overlap at all.

As usual, I was too involved in my drawing to scan WIP pics, so I just shot them at my drawing board with my phone, explaining the uneven lighting:

At times, I felt I'd overdone the drawing of the outside. Now, I think that I was just having too much fun with it! But I did try to show restraint on the interior drawing. The dramatic contrast between the seeds and the flesh was so beautiful; it needed no help from me. And, of course, I forgot to take pics along the way. Oops.

Finally, I have to confess that I never tasted it. I know, I know....but it got brown inside rather quickly from sitting out and I wasn't sure it was at its best. I do plan on getting another to sample. Have you eaten cherimoya? What do you think?

Dragonfruit!

(click to enlarge—and to get rid of the weird blurry type that I can't seem to fix here...)

Dragon fruit—aka Pitaya—are one of the most exotic-looking things you'll ever see in the produce section. I've only seen these tropical beauties a few times in my grocery store, and they usually look a little shopworn. So when I saw a whole bin of them last week, in gorgeous condition, I had to bring one home to model for me.

As if that gorgeous exterior wasn't enough, when you cut open a dragon fruit, you have the contrast of the snow-white flesh full of little black seeds. The one I used didn't have a very interesting taste - rather milder than I expected, but the crunch of the seeds is wonderful. If you do an image search of "dragonfruit recipes" you'll see how these can be used—in puddings, desserts, etc. My favorite is using a melon baller to make beautiful speckled orbs from the flesh.

I worked this drawing a little more than I intended; I actually prefer the feel of the unfinished one. But I was sick for a few days after starting it, and sort of lost some momentum along the way.  It's all about knowing when to stop, isn't it?

It's pouring rain today, here in Northern California, which we are thrilled about as far as our drought goes, but I wouldn't mind being in someplace a bit more tropical...!

It's persimmon season...

Fuyu Persimmons, 8" x 10"Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge paper

Persimmons are starting to appear at the market! These tomato-shaped Fuyu persimmons are available now, which means the bigger, cone-shaped Hachiyas will be here soon. I found the leaves, or sepals, quite interesting because they appear in arrangements of four, which seems a bit unusual in the fruit world. I've written before about the star shapes and multiples of five that are found in so many fruits and vegetables, but these are definitely a symmetrical, cross-shaped arrangement of four. 

When I draw shiny fruits and vegetables, it's easy for me to overwork the burnishing, so I deliberately held back a bit on these. I wanted to capture some of the frosty "bloom" that appears on the skins, which was quite a challenge; it'd have been easier to have polished them up before I drew them!

Here are some WIP shots; I hope to have some Hachiya persimmons as models before too long!

A pomegranate's progress

I think that perhaps I should have stopped soon after I scanned this one (above), as the final (below) looks a bit overworked to me.

And since I may not get around to drawing a companion cross-section view, I decided to add a shadow this time, and call it a day:

When in doubt, draw a pear.

We have been having some work done in our house (this is week 7, I think) and my little drawing nook and our office were both off-limits for a while, which is why there's been such a dry spell between posts. Oh, I know, I should be able to draw anywhere, and I could blog from my laptop pretty much anywhere, but I find it hard to get into the right state of mind when there's so much noise and dust and chaos, and my house is overrun with strangers.

Now that my little nook is back together, I can think about drawing again, but I feel rusty and out of shape. (It didn't help matters that my weekly life-drawing meet-up was on a 3-week hiatus as well.)

So, last night, I drew a pear.

Feeling rusty? Draw a pear. Uninspired? Draw a pear. Maybe it's their elegant proportions, but pears have been an artist's favorite subject for centuries. My little Bosc pear won't win any prizes, but it loosened things up in both my brain and my drawing hand.

So, check back soon; I should be posting regularly now. And if you have a few minutes, go draw a pear.

Flag Day

7" x 7", Prismacolor colored pencils 

on Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper, Light Blue

(click to enlarge)

It's Flag Day today, so I'm re-posting this piece from last summer.  When I was growing up, everyone put their flags out on Flag Day but it doesn't seem to be widely celebrated today. I hang my flag out from Memorial Day until Labor Day—it just looks like Summer to me. 

(You can read last summer's post about this piece here.)

Papayas & Pencils

Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge paper

It takes a lot of pencils to draw a papaya—

and these were just for the outside.

As you know, I love comparing the exterior of a fruit or vegetable to its interior, which is often wildly different. Looking at its humble yellow skin, you'd never know it is concealing a cache of beautiful, black caviar-like seeds.

 Apologies for the quality of these last WIP shots...I took them at my desk with my phone instead of scanning.

This next one is a great example of the "ugly phase" that a lot of my drawings seem to go through—where I'm just about to toss the whole darn thing in the trash. Then, somehow, things finally start to come together. Whew.

Blueberries for the first day of Spring

Prismacolor colored pencils on Stonehenge paper

approx. 6" x 8"

Blueberries rarely come in the wonderful old-fashioned balsa baskets any more. Occasionally I'll see them at a farmer's market, but the one that "modeled" with my blueberries here is part of a stack of them I bought at an estate sale.

Even on a simple drawing like this one, if the perspective of the container is off, the whole thing is a mess, so I worked on this sketch for a while until it looks right to me.

Here's how things started out:

I always love the look of  a drawing when just a few parts are completed. I think that's why I decided, right about this time, to keep the front face of the basket as the white of the paper.

When I'm not sure where I'm headed, I'll scan what I have and
play around by hand or in Photoshop to explore my options.

And there you have it...blueberries on the first day of Spring!

(If you're interested, I've got more blueberry drawings here.)

Golden Delicious

My neighbor's Golden Delicious apple tree is loaded with fruit, despite its height of less than five feet. They were quite greenish in color when picked, but have now ripened to their beautiful eponymous color. That monochromatic coloring doesn't lend itself to a drawing quite as dramatic as the Gala variety that I drew a while back, but I really loved the brown marking on the skin near the stem. Now that apple season is upon us, I'm hoping to fit in drawings of a few more varieties for this series:

Any favorites you'd like me to look for?

Horned Melon

Horned Melon, Cucumis metuliferus

Prismacolor colored pencils on Stonehenge paper

Have you seen these little spiky creatures at your grocery store? I saw some a few months ago, but didn't buy one as I had no time to draw it then. I've been scouting the produce section for them ever since, and—lo and behold—there they were last weekend! (I was going to get two, but that was before I realized they were about $6 apiece. Yikes.)

The horned melon is also known as the kiwano melon or the African horned melon, but I prefer its cute nicknames: hedged melon, blowfish melon, and jelly melon.

I drew the outside first and tried to see if the spikes fell in any kind of pattern or symmetry. (You know about my obsession with radial symmetry in nature.) But they seemed to be rather randomly arranged. So imagine my surprise when I cut it in half to draw the inside: My cut went through 3 spikes that were in an almost perfect equilateral triangle! In fact, the whole cross-section was shaped like a circle with 6 flattened faces. The cross-section looks very much like a cucumber (which is in the same family).

I am intrigued by fruits and vegetables, such as watermelon and kiwi, whose insides are in sharp contrast to their outerwear. This one pretty much wins the prize in that category, doesn't it?
(And, no I haven't tasted it...yet!)

Three limes and a paper bag

Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge paper ("Fawn", I think)

Approx. 5" x 6"

I bought some limes the other day to make this yummy melon gazpacho. As I was unpacking the groceries, they tumbled out of the bag and I thought they looked so beautiful—their bright, shiny green skins against the brown paper bag. (This drawing is a bit looser than some that I do...I had to get those limes juiced for the gazpacho at some point!)

But as I was drawing, I couldn't decide who was the star—the limes or the paper bag? Who doesn't enjoy the age-old classic challenge of drawing a crumpled paper bag? The limes won out, so I left the bag as just a few lines and shadows. (Now I'm in the mood to draw the bag all by itself and let it be the star this time.)

But the image above is a cropped version of the actual drawing. I've written posts about cropping before (here), but it's always an interesting challenge for me. I don't draw digitally, but I have come to rely on (or be dependent upon?) the Photoshop cropping tool. It's probably not a good thing that I know that I can, for all practical purposes, "compose" my drawing after-the-fact. I could play around with cropping for ages—I love being able to crop an image different ways for different uses, frames, etc.

Here's the actual full drawing:

And this one is "zoomed out" a bit further than the image at the top of the post:

And a square formatted one, for what it's worth:

What do you think? Is the cropping tool a crutch or just another wonderful tool to work with? Oh, and which of these cropped versions do you prefer?

Pretty Peach (and one that's a bit off)

Prismacolor colored pencils on Stonehenge paper

(click to enlarge)

I'll tell you right off the bat that I'm not all that happy with this one. Maybe it's because I realized, partway through the drawing, that the shape of the half on the left isn't quite right. I probably should have scrapped it then, and started over, but I worked on, hoping things would look okay as they were rendered.  But when it's wrong, it's wrong, and I think my heart just wasn't in this one after that point. It happens.  Although I did really have fun drawing the the peach pit!

Peach pits...I must detour a bit down Memory Lane. When I was a kid, Avon had this line of toiletries for girls called Pretty Peach. We had a few treasured items, but my hands-down favorite was this set of 3 soaps. (I just love things that have a little surprise inside when you open them.) To this day, I can't cut a peach in half without thinking of these:

(Isn't Google image search amazing? Found this on ebay.)

Okay, onward and upward to a better drawing next time. In the meantime, here are some WIP pics to distract you from my misshapen peach half. (Apologies for the uneven lighting; I just snapped these with my iphone at my desk rather than stopping to scan.) Have a peachy day.