Quick pen sketch of my cat from life

Ari cat was on my lap for this one. Yesterday was "artish" rather than any drawing or painting. I matted the Colourful Tomato and got it up on the wall, then with the help of my home care worker sorted through a big pile of stuff in front of the closet. Looking for the plastic fruits my friend CeCe gave me when I moved, which I thought were in the boxes by the closet, I found out the closet had a lot more space than I thought. So the pile got sorted and moved into it while the fruits bag was discovered hanging neatly from one of the hangers inside. I hadn't found it because I hadn't gotten into the closet for months.

So that was amusing and hilarious. Still haven't found the two green pears I knew I had, but a yellow pear is in the bag so I can go back to pear studies. It doesn't matter what color the plastic one is, pretty easy to vary that from memory. I have enough to set up some still lifes now just as I planned when CeCe first gave me that basket of artificial fruit. They're very good ones, look quite real. The apple looked so real a different home care worker picked it up to eat it instead of one of the two similar real ones that were sitting next to it.

The big advantage of artificial fruit is that it will not rot or go bad. You can create a setup and leave it up for weeks if you use a slow painting method like colored pencils or even if you just get interrupted. Or rearrange it and redo it knowing you're working with the same objects. Since I often have a problem overbuying real fruit on account of its beauty and wasting it, I was glad to get these. The green grapes even have little brown spots on them like real ones and the same translucence, compared the last time I had real green grapes.

Like photo references, objects for still life are useful but memory comes into it too. It may help to look at dented and bruised fruit and do quick studies of the blemishes so they can be added to paintings set up with artificial fruit. Or artistically added to the fakes with acrylic, why not?

I also worked some more on Clouds Coming In... with Terry Ludwig pastels. I'm not happy with it, needs some more work. Thinking of making changes to the left side of the land area so as to break the symmetry and bringing in some different pastels because I worked with a relatively limited palette that wasn't right for this subject. I'm okay with the distance and more or less okay with the right side, it just needs more work. And maybe more simplification.