Apples

Of the 33 paintings on the "Let's be serious" part of my website, www.artatdragonhill.com, 22 of them include fruit! Fruit is one of most still life artist's favorite subjects. It's easy to see that I fit into this catagory! I'm in good company--Cezanne used apples in his paintings many times. I've read that he'd keep his still life model set-up until the apples were rotten!

Actually, more apples are used for still life paintings than any other fruit. There are about 10,000 varieties grown around the world. (My current favorite is the Fuji, for eating that is!) Apples are growing somewhere in the U.S. at all times. They outlast most other fruits in the still life arrangement and they come in lots of colors, sizes and shapes which makes the apple appealing to the artist.

Also, from the artists point-of-view, apples teach us a lot about form. They have five nodes on their base, giving rise to many more planes coming up the sides. More planes angle in toward the stem, for a total of approximately 12 planes that need to be addressed when painting. But really, all that this mumbojumbo means is that the apple has form, that it is round!

So that's my apple discussion. And now I think I'll go eat an apple!