#61 3/18/19 Green Bananas

I went grocery shopping last week, because of Paul coming in.  This painting kick completely changes how I shop the produce department.  Instead of "Do we need this?" and "Is this a good price?" it is now "Hmmm, nice color, nice shape, it will make an interesting painting, sold!"  I ended up with mushrooms, grapes, plums, pears, a red pepper, a purple onion, two avocados and bananas.  Previously, I likely would have only brought home a bag of salad and the avocados. Tonight I painted the bananas.  They were still green when I photographed them, and I was going to leave that fact out of the painting, but I decided to leave it in.  I also decided to leave the Chiquita sticker intact when I photographed them, although I took 4 of them off (for some reason the sticker person went crazy putting a sticker on nearly each banana in the bunch).

The canvas was previously painted with denim blue....some left-over smush from a palette a few weeks ago.  I've been reading, well skimming, the color chapter in the "Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted" book.  The chapter is called "Getting the Colors You Want" and the author claims that once you learn her simple method, you will never be stumped for the right color.  I focused on the word "simple" and somewhere in the 20 pages of the chapter I shouted "SIMPLE????" and stopped reading.  The only thing I got from the chapter so far was that I forgot my Delaplaine class lesson on using complementary colors to change values.  So on these bananas, I used some violet to paint the shadowed parts.  Now, as I write this blog entry, and have the book open (so I could count how many pages in the chapter, wouldn't want anyone thinking it was only 3 pages), I am noting the 2 pages that describe why "yellow and violet are the exception to the rule" on the complementary color trick.  Instead it says you also should add French Ultramarine blue mixed with an appropriate amount of white to bring it to the same value.  Huh?  (That was likely the part of the chapter that made me shout "SIMPLE????")