Summer's Bounty

There is a hint of frost in the air, and the next five days are to be cool and rainy. It's time to harvest the summer's bounty. We have so many tomatos this year. In the spring, we bought a four pack of "mystery" tomatos - they had lost their identifying tag and were on sale for $1.49. It tuned out they were all cherry tomatos, I think perhaps String of Pearls or Sweet Millions. The vines often have 14 or 16 tomatos on them. Pictured here are some of the larger ones. We eat them at every meal, and have given several bowls to the neighbors. These were ripening on the counter in a transparent bowl. The sun shining on made such lovely patterns and shadows and highlights. What could I do but paint them? It seemed the perfect thing to continue my study of transparency. I was halfway through when Shawn stole the top tomato (the one shaped like a strawberry) to eat with his lunch.
"The incredible gift of the ordinary! Glory comes streaming from the table of daily life."

Macrina Wiederkehr

I have been remiss in posting because I have been struggling with another sketch that I wanted to do that has had me very frustrated. It was of my favorite tea tin and cup (combining two challenges). But for the life of me, I couldn't get that tin's back corner to stay grounded on the table. It always looked as if it was defying gravity and floating upwards. Those pesky vanishing points have come back to haunt me. After 4 confidence-destroying attempts, I gave up and had to try something that had a possiblility of being moderately successful. I like the way the shadows and highlights turned out on this tomato sketch. And perhaps tomorrow, I will go back to the drawing board (so to speak) and practice vanishing points and two point perspective once again.