spaghetti squash

I took these photos today after scooping the seeds out of a spaghetti squash, in order to cook the squash. I thought the yellow-orange colour of the gunk from the middle of the squash looked neat against the blue of this bowl.

apple #3

This is one of my all-time favorite drawings of mine. I don't normally like to make overly realistic drawings, but sometimes everything just works. That apple on the left looks like it wants to pop right off the page. I can almost feel its texture against my teeth. I can taste it...

The drawing started out with some colour laid down with Crayola washable markers. I sprayed the ink with water to make it run, and after it was dry I went in with coloured pencils and added all the details.

mangoes

This drawing actually started out as a watercolour painting. After doing an initial wash with some yellow and red, I let the painting dry and then went in with coloured pencils and added cross-hatching and other details.

pear

Another from the coloured-pencil fruit series. This is one of my favorites, because of the deep, saturated colour of the pear.

grapefruit

I did a whole series of coloured-pencil fruit during this period, but these are some of my favorites. The drawing was done on the back of a recycled photocopy, and the dark areas of toner can be seen through the page.

banana

I've found that bananas are one of the hardest fruits for me to draw. Perfectly yellow ones don't have a lot of colour gradation for me to play with (my selection of green and yellow coloured pencils is pretty limited), and once bananas start to brown they're too complicated for me to be interested.

This drawing was made with coloured and soft graphite pencil.

tumbling fruit

I went through a period of drawing lots of fruit with coloured pencil. This is one of my favorite works from that time.

tomatoes

I created this journal entry after admiring some tomatoes that were sitting in a bowl on my table. The collaged scrap of paper is a printout of an online map. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and china markers in various colours.

apple #2

This apple was actually created before apple #1; if you look closely, you'll see that the apple image in the latter is actually a computer-generated print of this drawing. I frequently use a print of this original image on the front of my handmade art cards.

The drawing was one in a series of coloured pencil works I did of fruit. I stopped half-way through, unhappy with the way I'd rendered the reflection in the lower half of the apple, and made notes to myself about what I would have done differently.

peaches/apricots

Imagine a puddle of peaches on a countertop. The blushing warmth of skin. Their roundness. A heat that is the colour of my heart, and a vision that makes my heart ache...

Pick one up. The weight and heft registering against palm. The gentleness of fingers not wishing to bruise. The stroke of a thumb against velveteen...

Lift to your nose and close your eyes. A fragrance of lightness that vanishes if inhaled too deeply. A vision of tiny white flowers that evaporate in a rainbow’s end whenever you get too close...

A sudden bite, and an explosion of sweetness. The ache of blushing colour now turned juicy. Inner flesh that melts under the tongue. The swallow...

The end is dripping stickiness, and a ragged pip that’s hard as rock...

(plant it, and another tree will grow...)

Friday September 3, 1999

This drawing was inspired by a bunch of apricots I had bought at the grocery store. The colours were amazing, and I wanted to capture some of that gorgeousness in a picture. I used watercolour to rough in the shapes of the apricots, and then finished with coloured-pencil cross-hatching and shading. The poem was written as a gift to a friend who liked poetry.

apple #1

I started this blog fully intending to post daily or near-daily, and now it's been six days since my last post. Life has intervened, I guess. That, plus I felt too tired to post whenever I thought of it recently.

I just completed an ongoing art journal and started a new one. This collage is from my new journal. The apple image is a colour inkjet print of an old drawing that I often use on my handmade note cards. My printer's yellow ink was running out, so the image ended up magenta. I hate to waste anything, and added the misprint to this collage.

I'm toying with the idea of creating a bunch of fabric patchwork pieces right now, and I find that every time I draw, I start creating large blocks of colour - hence the patchwork-y nature of the colours in this collage. The pencil text is part of a journal entry.

The journal was originally an art project for a first-year studio course I took at university, and I've ripped out some of the pages to make room for the collages (if you don't rip out pages, the finished book gets too thick). I've left some of the pages behind, and the phrase "a Book of Shadows" comes from the original art project. I created a book of children's rhymes and "spells" for a performance piece, and read from the book during the performance.