Avocado

Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary, Saturday, 20th February 2010

avocado MORE FRUITS of the Earth; bananas from Colombia and an avocado which wasn't labelled. Although the avocado originated in tropical Mexico it can be grown in temperate climates.

These were both drawn with a 0.2 Rotring Tikky Graphics pen. I felt the bananas had ended up looking rather flat so I made a closely hatching pen drawing of the avocado before adding a wash which included paynes grey to give it some depth.

My perennial dilemma with bananas is trying to give them form without losing the yellow - I don't want the shadows looking too brown but a dark yellow is inevitably going to have to move towards being a brown of some description. I decided against making a tonal drawing in paynes grey then, when that was dry, adding the yellow. As yellow is so transparent the banana would then start looking green where the bluey green paynes grey shows through.