Colour up some fruit or veg

Waiting for the results of the DRAWING COMPETITION, we're still here and we're still confined so let's get cracking on something new and colourful.

It's not a competition, it's about having a bit of fun with colour. Or line. Your choice.

I bought my veggies and fruit last week and laid them out on the washing machine to dry (yes! here where I am quarantined you have to wash and disinfect all fruit and veg coronavirus or not!).

What a variety of shapes and colours I thought. Surely there was a painting in there?

Do I hear you saying: what, just a bit of fruit?

Yes fruit, even simple apples, make a picture as that wonderful French painter Cézanne showed us.

The great Spanish master, Zurbarán, was also rather good at moody fruit scenes. Lots of dark shadows - fun to try and imitate on black paper?

Cézanne was following a great artistic tradition that was particularly popular in the 16th and 17th centuries  - Nature Morte, Still life paintings. 

The Dutch were prolific painters of such subjects as you can see in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Not been there? No excuse! Works in the Rijksmuseum and dozens of other magnificent museums around the world can be viewed during a virtual visit online.

Tap here and off you go:  https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/from-home 

Look at these other images 'borrowed' from the internet - I've selected a varied to show different approaches starting with a couple of pears by British artist, Andrew Geeson (he's got a good website).

And Hazel Soan's fruit - done in 10 minutes - from her book of 10-minute watercolours. Lots of wet paint, and excellent wet in wet. BUT as Hazel would tell you, lots of thinking before you put the paint onto the paper. Think before pink!

You'll see that you don't have to do a whole bowl, or even the whole fruit to make a picture.

       

Maybe you remember either of these, below, that were shown in a workshop a couple of years ago.

No fancy props. Just a dish or a bowl. And done in coloured crayon. Not up to Cézanne's standard (or sale price!) but nevertheless fun to do and a colourful result.

So, how to proceed? 

Get out your pencils, paints, or crayons. And decide what type of paper you'll use. 

Look at what you have. Arrange it simply but tastefully with side lighting or good shade somewhere to give good depth. Unless you just fancy doing an outline drawing or painting. 

You don't need many props.  A plate, and you can ignore the background. Or, if you followed the 'cellphone blog' a few weeks ago, arrange your potatoes, apples, bananas or grapes - whatever - and take some snaps and work on them on your phone, pad or computer, cropping or manipulating till they are sharp and colourful. 

Or that old standby, just cut a rectangle in an old bit of paper and hold it up to your fruit, moving it around till you find, confined by your cut-out, shapes and colour you like.

It's also a smart idea to take a photo of your composition in case the painting gets interrupted by your early morning walk, the plumber or Netflix and the lighting conditions change.

You don't have to have realistic colour. You don't even have to have colour! Last week's DRAWING COMPETITION featured, if you recall, a simple drawing of an onion in graphite. And you don't have to reproduce every nuance and blemish to make a good picture.

I looked again at my fruit on the washing machine and isolated an area I thought might make a picture. But I didn't like all those tacky stems at the top of the grapes and decided to cover them up with more grapes. See below.

But don't think this is just about fruit. Veg are good too!

Over to you. Send us your pictures by 20th May and we'll put them on the internet later on.

Happy painting.