Grocery shopping, the artist's way

Yesterday after work, I found myself in the supermarket trying to do the shopping for next week's lunches. I was totally uninspired, circling around and around the section, trying to decide what I would want to cook. The only condition was that it had to be food that I could keep till Sunday. At one point I found myself staring at the huge variety of tomatoes. It's amazing how the choice has increased over the past few years, when there were only about two, or three at most, varieties of tomatoes available. I was especially fascinated by a big huge tomato that looked a bit like one of those pumpkins. They were ridiculously expensive, but I thought it would just be perfect to sketch and paint, and so I decided to get just the one.

The addition of the tomato still didn't solve my problem of what vegetable to get to go with the potatoes and fennels I already got. I decided to go for the good old carrot. While steering towards the big box of carrots, I remembered having seen some of those yellow ones not too long ago. Now wouldn't yellow carrots be nice to sketch too, and make a much better page in my sketchbook together with my special tomato? Yes, they had yellow carrots, and I happily made my way to the tills, having not only sorted out my lunches, but my an evening of sketchign too.

It was one of the rare sunny days yesterday, so I took the chance to take some photos of my veggies on the window sill, before sketching them. It's been quite a while since I've done some proper photography other than landscape shots while out walking, and I really enjoyed snapping my tomato and carrots from all sides (hence the slight photo overload in this post).

Then on to sketching them. I decided to use my new square watercolour sketchbook I had found recently in an art shop here (and let me tell you, sketchbooks with real watercolour paper are hard to find here). It's 25x25cm, which is a good size to work with at home, and it's square, which I always like. I made the sketches using a pencil first, then going over with a pen.

Adding colour. I really enjoyed getting out my proper, expensive watercolour paints again. I even went so far as to leave out white spaces for the highlights on the tomato, instead of going over with white gouache or a gel pen to add them later, as I usually do.

I meant to have the tomato for dinner, but it was getting a bit late, and I didn't want to use a photo as reference but the real thing for adding the colour, to get all the highlights and shadows more or less right. Photos are very useful to use for painting, but it's always nicer to have the real thing, so I ended up not having it. The sacrifices we make for the sake of art...

I haven't quite decided yet if it's finished or not, but I think I'll probably leave it as it is. And I'll have to find some more interesting vegetables or fruits to sketch. And I'm looking forward to a lovely tomato dinner when I get home tonight.

Linking this up to the delicious Paint Party Friday