Daily Paintworks Citrus Challenge-A challenge indeed!

Citrus Challenge 1, 6 x 6, Beth Carrington Brown

Taking a break from painting beets and winter and root vegetables, I decided to submit an entry to the Daily Paintworks Citrus Challenge.

I sat down with artist Monica Linares and we set up a still life to do from different angles. We had a good time, but decided that it takes almost as much time setting up the still life as it does to paint it!

Ahead of time you think on your subject. Well, we knew we would do citrus-so then you head to the store. A  Whole Foods Market is in the same shopping center as our art gallery-which makes it easy to get nice produce. Then once you get to the produce section you are easily overwhelmed with choices: Lemons, limes, oranges, blood oranges, grapefruit, and so on. It’s funny how differently you choose fruit for painting-then you do for eating. I  definitely go with a certain “look” in mind that I want to paint. If the produce is still good days later, I get to eat it too!

Once we are back with our produce then comes the discussion of which pieces of fruit to paint, and how to arrange them: 3 of one thing, 2 of one, and one of another.  Do we want them in the bowl, or on a cutting board? Do we want them cut open, or whole? Once you get through all those decisions then the talk moves to what perspective: Do we want it at eye level, looking down directly, slightly elevated..?  Then it has to look good from both our angles-we both want the right “arrangement” of fruit”. PHEW!

At any rate-we did it and still managed to be good friends when it was all said and done. Here are the two views we chose:

Citrus Challenge 1, 6 x 6, Beth Carrington Brown

Monica’s painting of the Citrus Challenge

You can bid on my painting by going to the Daily Paintworks Gallery link to the right. You can see more of Monica’s work by clicking on the link to her site.

Beth