Plums of summer

Plum, 5x6" acrylic on illustration board

Here is another in my set of summer fruits. (Pear, peach, cherries, plum) Some of the fruits were done earlier this spring. This one was fun - and a little challenging - to work with a sense of reflectivity and layers of color. While many plums are a very dark purple, there is much more than that going on in the color....many undertones, which give it a sense of reflectivity. Also, plums often have a matt area of light blue on the skin.... and then just some spots of actual reflected light. I have tried to see these things with my eyes and not my brain - and faithfully put them down. You might be interested to know I'm not an artist who uses black pigment. I don't even buy it! If I need something that looks like black, I mix it from other colors. I like the results - the brain reads it as black, but there is color happening within the "black". Even though this is a "black plum" as marketed in the store, there is no black ... even in the gray stem, it is all mixed from colors.

There will be an "unveiling" in a few short days (I expect) of what I am planning to do with these small fruit illustrations. I'll keep you informed!