#fruit

Pomegranates is my first fruit painting in years. Of course, I thoroughly enjoyed the remnants. To me, this fruit is as sweet as cake or candy!

I hadn’t been planning to paint this, but that changed when the mail came about two weeks ago.

It’s no secret that I am on a mission to get rid of 18 years of junk in the house. As soon as papers come into the house, I throw them out – a change from past behavior. So when I opened up a rather unremarkable, unsolicited package of Rosh Hashana cards, I found this one and stopped myself in the middle of tossing the cards out. I didn’t know why at the time, but I put this one on the dining room table (my work station for September).

With the rapidly approach Rosh Hashana holiday, I then started pondering pomegranates as a subject. They are colorful and have beautiful patterns when sliced open, both of which appeal to me. And I could use the painting as a holiday card or email. So I bought 2 pomegranates, sliced one open, and had a good time playing with compositions.

You would be surprised at how many photos  (aka digital clutter) it takes to get one good one to paint. The pomegranate still life setups looked better in person than they did through the lens. When I realized they were too complicated to do in one day,  I started taking pieces away until I ended up with simpler compositions, like this one.

My go-to color for the seeds was alizarin crimson, which I have never been able to mix. Fortunately, I had a new tube on hand. Ah, those seeds. It took me a while to get the hang of them, and I could still use some more practice capturing their translucent quality. The seeds were a change of pace from my typical dessert subjects, but I like to think of them as the crumbs that make the painting interesting. They were hard to paint, but not so hard that I got discouraged.

I liked watching this painting emerge today. At some point, I will do a square version of it to compare formats. Recently I have been thinking that the square format feels more contemporary. What do you think?

This is not the last pomegranate you’re going to see this month. I’m hooked in more ways than one.