Peppers

I am happy about this drawing -- I corrected the lines as I went, and felt that I had done a good job of capturing the shapes of the vegetables. I decided that I'd better scan it before painting it, in case I screwed it up later. The lines are darker than in reality:

What is it about red? First I had a problem getting the tomatoes to look right; the red pepper was even worse. I like the way the yellow one turned out, though:

In September 2004, I had tried painting a green pepper for the first time. It has a certain tortured, expressionist look to it, for which I feel a certain fondness. I've gotten looser since then, and more in control of colour and the watercolour medium:

Moo

I confess that I drew this, not from life, but from a fuzzy old photograph taken by R, which we were going to throw away. It is a Chennai cow, anyway.

My father had several talents of interest to small children: he could wiggle his ears; he had a signet ring - we called it his magic ring - which he could make disappear; but most of all, he was really good at mooing. He was sparing in performing all of these wonders, so that they retained their desirability. But once in awhile we would say, "Make a moo, Daddy!" and he would oblige. It began with a long, deep "MMMMMMMM", and then extended out to "oooooooo", and it was very satisfactory indeed.