Pineapple

The day that I painted the vegetables just below this, I went to the store to buy some more models to paint. I thought I'd make sure to get some fruits / vegetables with more features, protrusions, patterns, than the tomatoes and green chillies of the morning. So I bought the most fiendishly complicated fruit available, the pineapple, of all things!

Don't ask why it's about to take a nosedive - it's about turning the paper to make it fit; and about being left-handed. It would have looked better if I'd flipped the image vertically, but then the shadow would have been on top.

The pineapple was somewhat skinny and bedraggled, so I painted it that way. I keep having to go back and adding another layer of glaze, because I'm timid about the colours. So then I went overboard on the body of the pineapple, and made it much too orange. I tried to tone that down with a layer of sepia, and the whole thing melted into a blur. And of course, it's more of a symbol of a pineapple than the amazingly intricate thing itself. I enjoyed looking at all its patterns and folds, anyway.

It's a little teapot

It's supposed to be pewter, but it might be better if I call it china, since it looks nothing like metal. The teapot, that is. I painted it without doing a pencil sketch first, and I did four versions on a large sheet of good Arches paper (that's my preliminary sketch in my notebook underneath). This is the last and best version, with a bit of blue glass from #1 on the lower left, and an unfinished window shutter from an abandoned picture floating in the upper left.

My father bought the tea set when I was a kid - just the small pot, big enough for two cups; and handle-less sugar bowl and creamer. They were very modern at the time, and I've always liked them, even though the pot is too small for more than one person, and I'm too lazy to get it out just for me. But being pewter, they're dull, with that buttery pewter glow; and people think that they're silver and that I'm slovenly and haven't bothered to polish them.