Culinary painting

Tissa Hewavitarane

When you are choosing a culinary still life subject the first thing to remember is that you don't necessarily need a huge variety of different objects, but if you want to make the most of textures, you need some contrast. A bowl of mixed fruits, such as apples, oranges mangoes or grapes would provide a variety of textures. Also, try to choose objects to paint that really exite you and challenge in terms of technique.

Fine paintings can be made from very simple subjects such as one or two apples on a rough wooden table. Don't decide to draw or paint something just because it is there go to the super market or to a grocer and have a look round for inspiration. The less familiar you are with the subject the more closely you will have to look at it and consider the best way of tackling the different textures.

In the past, vegetables were less popular than fruit as still life subjects, perhaps because of this more lowly status, but possibly also because they donot appeal to the taste buds in the same way.

Nowadays, however more and more artists are discovering their possibilities and if you look at the range of textures colours and shapes you can see why. To refer to few examples the thin-skinned subtly coloured onions, the delightfully crinky savoy cabbage and green and black pepper.

Arrangement

One of the best advice I was ever given about still life was to study the range of food and objects on a table during or after a meal. Whether it is a boiled egg and slices of toast or fruits, the range of subjects seemed endless. The rather haphazard arrangement of the food and other object soften suggested interesting and natural-looking compositions. In general a still life should not look too 'posed'. For the beginner it is always best to start off with a limited number of objects perhaps no more than five or six and to arrange them in a simple composition. In choosing the objects for the painting pay special attention to the contrast and balance of different textures.

Media and methods

Although many of the textures of fruit, vegetables and food can be rendered equally effectively in a number of media it is worth while to consider their relative strengths and weaknesses by trying out several different ones.

Pencil and coloured pencil

Drawing fruit and vegetables can be an excellent introduction to the idea of representing texture. The wide range of different surfaces, colours and shapes will challenge your skills on many different levels, in particular testing your ability to adopt your drawing style to suit the subjects.

The pencil is one of the most versatile of all drawing implements, offering an almost infinite range of marks and effects which will suit most approaches and styles.

If you want to explore the more suggestive possibilities of the pencil, don't sharpen it all the time - experiment with a worn rounded soft-leaded pencil or even charcoal stick to broaden your range.

For those who find it difficult to draw fruit and culinary subjects in monochrome, coloured pencils can be as exciting alternative. They can be used in similar ways to the pencil but are also capable of some marvellous colour effects. To get the most out of them be sure to use paper with a slight grain so that you can build up the drawing. If the paper is hard and smooth, the colours will take depth and the result will look rather thin.

Pastel

Soft pastel is a wonderfully sympathetic medium for drawing soft-skinned fruit such as peaches or apricots. The vivid colours and opaque, matt surface perfectly recreate those of the subject.

The dry, crumbly nature of pastels also make them highly suited for rendering foods which have a similar texture, such as cakes, bread and biscuits.

One thing to remember about pastels, however, is that the effects you achieve depend very much on how you use them. Blending colours together with a finger, a piece of cotton wool, or, a special implement called a torchon (a very tight roll of paper with a point at one end) will produce a sot effect, with colours and tones merging together almost imperceptibly.

This technique is well suited to smooth objects with matt or shiny surfaces such as eggs.

You do not have to stick to one method throughout. You can also let the paper help you describe texture.

Pastels can be done on white paper, but coloured surfaces are normally used because it is difficult to cover the surface completely and specks of white showing through the pastel marks tend to detract from the picture.

Pastel can be used to convey detailed and complex textures and colourings.

Oil

Oil paint is such a versatile medium, with the possibility of rendering so many different textures in such variety of ways, that it is almost impossible to choose any one technique over another as particularly suitable for culinary subjects. However a good general rule is to try to use the paint so that its physical nature has some affinity with that of the subject. You cannot do this with either water colour or pastels, which have their own uncompromising natures, but oil paints are endlessly adaptable - they can be used thin and semi-transparent, with almost invisible brushmarks of thick and oily brusstrokes.

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