It’s about Arthur, my pet avocado tree.

I was feeling a bit down this morning, missing the company that we had for the past week or two. I went out on the back porch with the idea of further documenting Arthur’s demise, much like I did with my dragonfruit (Single Dragonfruit, Symmetry, Dragonfruit Unchained, Dragonfruitus Resumptus and Aging Dragonfruit, Old Dragonfruits Never Die).

But Arthur seems to be coming around. I know! Hard to believe. His existing leaves are becoming more decrepitudinous, but there is a sprout of new leaves at the top!

Today’s experiment

I did my sketch of Arthur with a charcoal pencil today. For some reason, using this method helped me to capture the general shapes of the leaves and stems much more easily than pencil.

Here is my sketch:

Arthur – Charcoal Sketch
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Greens

I decided that the colors I chose for my palette limit are very limited when it comes to greens. I only have Hooker’s green and Phthalo green. The former is a dark color, which requires quite a bit of dilution to get an acceptable shade of green for leaves; the latter is tinted very much on the blue side.

I tried to add different greens in the (preliminary) sketch below. Among the colors in today’s experiment are Chrome green, Olive green, Phthalo yellow green, which is a perfect color for the pale greens of Arthur’s compromised leaves.

Arthur with Growth Spurt
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Most of the fine definition is already done. Tomorrow I will be trying to make the leaves more distinct by practicing my glazing techniques.