Most still lifes have a collection of fruit, or vegetables, or dead rabbits, dead fish or any combination of them. I suppose the prerequisite for a still life is that the objects once had to be alive. Having not yet delved into the history of painting of ‘still lifes’, I am curious to know the origin of the word. It seems oxymoronic to me. If I were naming this genre of painting, I would call it ‘still former lifes’. But I digress.

My wife and I have been trying to eat healthier food lately. I have combed the food stands for fruits that we read about. One of the advantages of having some of these exotic fruits in the house is, I get to experiment with watercolor sketching.

Today’s experiment – the guava

I never saw a guava before yesterday. They are small, lumpy green things shaped like a pear. Lumpy things are really hard to do in watercolor – at least for me. Below is my sketch.

Guava and Tangerine
5″x7″ 140# Hot Pressed Watercolor Block

I included the remaining tangerine – from my Apples and Oranges post, for scale (and practice with orange reflections).

I think I captured the lumpiness fairly well. There are longitudinal depressions in the guava, running from pole to pole, that I didn’t quite capture. But I’m getting better at including a wider range of tonal values (from darkest dark to lightest light) in my sketches.

I should probably be working on a larger scale instead of the 5X7 inch paper. I’m a little concerned, however, in the case of lumpy fruit, that it would be a little too much. I don’t want to paint hyperrealistic portraits of fruit, but how does one scale up? Does one choose which lumps to keep and which to omit? Is generic lumpiness ok?

Maybe that’s why artists use bowls of fruit… The format is larger, but each piece of fruit is of manageable size.

I’m working up to collections of fruit. I would like to have individual portraits of them first. Perhaps my urge to do this is similar to the reason I am compiling a Hand Gesture Atlas. I must have some kind of need to catalog and classify.

I hope I don’t have to work through all the fruit AND vegetables (ugh – think of all the curly-edged leaves I would have to paint in a kale still life).

Tomorrow’s fruit – the papaya!