Conference pear

‘Conference pear’  © Peter Gander 2013

Before I ate this Conference pear I was taken by its textured skin and so took to painting it first! My piece of broken wax candle served to impart the texture via washes of watercolour over subsequent wax resist marks. Extra linear marks and white highlight were added with blue, sepia and white Conté sticks. Watercolour on The Langton 300gsm (rough) paper.

Red onion and tomato

I have always admired art which employs the technique of cloisonné and this is not the first time I have used the style myself. The word, from circa 1863, means “divided into compartments” from the French cloisonné, from cloison “a partition,” and from the Latin verb clausus, “shut”. Anyway, enough art theory, that’s a very long-winded way of saying my black outlines represent partitions that hold seperate colours, like a stained-glass window. A touch of wax on the textured surface of the onion gives the papery surface some texture, whereas the tomato just needed the white paper substrate to shine through. The shadow colour was applied onto an area (water sheen still showing, not waterlogged) of clear water. This ensures a feathered bleed/soft edge. Winsor & Newton watercolour on Bockingford 200gsm paper.