Colorful Peach

Colourful Peach

5 x 7" Pastel on Paper

This small painting took me two days and a number of experiments. I used Unison pastels on Canson Mi-Tientes and loved the way the smooth side kept taking layers. There are eight or nine layers on the more detailed areas of the peach. 

One of the hardest fruits to paint is a peach because of the soft pale fuzz over the whole thing. I added that last and sweated over every light stroke,  but succeeded in getting the haze that appeared mostly around the edges in real life. The photos I took enhanced that and paled the entire fruit, but I worked from life right to the end. I changed the colors of background and surface but not the angle.

I got a bit playful with the shadow and liked the way the colors played within it, so decided to leave that more whimsical than literal. The photo's a little off but in person it has some peacock iridescence that I loved seeing. I could have muted it more to get a more realistic effect but decided not to for artistic reasons. So it's one more step away from literal representation. I knew what I needed to do but that pool of color reminded me of completely different subjects and I liked it.

I can always experiment with these. The realist triumph here was the fuzzes, the shadow can be more transparent next time.