How To Draw Fruit Shop

How to draw fruit and veg like Giovanna Garzoni

Jake Spicer shows how to draw a still life with fruit and vegetables, taking inspiration from Giovanna Garzoni

I have always preferred the English term "still life" (from the Dutch, stilleven) to the French nature morte or Italian natura morta. The experience of drawing a still life subject always feels more like preserving life than drawing dead nature.

To paraphrase Gormenghast illustrator Mervyn Peake, a still life "holds back from the brink of oblivion" that delicious moment where fruit and vegetables, plucked ripe from the vine, branch or soil, take on their most vibrant colouring and tantalising textures before inevitable consumption or decay. In this second instalment of a six-part series on the genre of still life we'll be looking at Italian Renaissance artist Giovanna Garzoni's staged depictions of fruit and vegetables.

As a means of sustaining eternal life it is no wonder that the earliest pictures that we might recognise as still life paintings can be found on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs, the images of fish, fowl and fruits having been preserved there for 3,500 years. Ancient Greek mosaics and 2,000-year-old Roman frescos present bowls and baskets – literal cornucopias – of plenty that celebrate the abundance of the harvest or signify the bounty of their owner's table.

It is these light, fresh images of Mediterranean heritage that pre-empt the high key and flat pictorial space of Giovanna Garzoni's still life paintings, in contrast to the dramatic chiaroscuro of the symbolic masterpieces of the Northern Renaissance being painted elsewhere in Europe.

ARTIST IN FOCUS: Giovanna Garzoni

Working in watercolour and tempera, the still life paintings of Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670) are brilliantly observed studies of cultivated nature, often contextualised as an accomplished contribution to the history of botanical art.

However, the established narrative of a female painter modestly representing a subject suitable for her sex is too narrow – the subjects she chose were radically global, combining Chinese porcelain with Mexican vegetables; South American jungle flowers with familiar Italian crops in compositions that would delight her patrons.

Her work was widely respected, and she made a good living from well-paid commissions, preferring cash to the trinkets and jewellery often offered to female artists of the time. Although her work was indeed an antecedent of 18th- and 19th-century scientific illustration, Giovanna Garzoni sits alongside her contemporary Artemisia Gentileschi as another successful, female painter of the Italian Baroque; seeing her through that lens can help us to rediscover the missing narratives of female artists of the Western tradition.

Composition: Setting up a still life

Garzoni's still life compositions are a sort of theatre. We are not expected to believe that we are viewing an authentic moment, as if we had stumbled upon a peasant's basket of freshly picked apples or entered a palatial dining room to see a just-to-be-devoured feast. Garzoni has arranged these compositions carefully for us to view and has brought us here, to the stage of the table. In these paintings we are invited to sit front row at a performance for one, flat-on to the horizontal edge.

In this vegetable tableau-vivant, the subject (an open-mouthed melon, a chorus of cherries, a quartet of lemons) sits centre stage, framed by plain backdrop and supported by a small cast of extras: a fly, a mouse, a cherry pit.

Garzoni's subjects are varied and flawed. Like well-observed characters in a play, once you have seen them portrayed on this "stage" you will forever see them reflected in the world around you. Every bowl of lemons you see from then on will be viewed through the lens of her depiction.

EXERCISE: Peach or apple?

Held in your hand a peach and an apple are tangibly different to one another, the soft velvet surface of a ripe peach has a gentle give to it whereas the glossy skin of an apple feels cooler and firmer. Despite these differences it is easy to draw them looking the same. Visually, the differences lie in the way light reflects off the surfaces and in order to distinguish between them you'll need to pay attention to the details of the surface.

On a peach, the soft fuzz creates a halo of light tone around the contours of the fruit and softens the local colour of its surface. On an apple, the edge is crisper and the shadows are more saturated, with specular highlights suggesting the glossy finish of its polished skin. Try drawing one of each and focus on these contrasting features.

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DEMO: How to draw fruit and veg in coloured pencil

Coloured pencil is a slow medium to work with, it has parallels with the careful strokes of Garzoni's tempera painting and suits a reflective process that gives you time to consider the subject you are drawing. The repeated contact of pencil on paper can help you to reflect on the tactile quality of objects that you are drawing, considering the texture and resistance of the surface of your subjects as you place them in the composition.

Before you start your drawing, make a few quick thumbnail sketches to test the arrangements. Think about how your set dressing and props – things like the backdrop, tablecloth, bowl – might balance with the colouring of your main players: the fruit, vegetables and flowers of the composition.

In this drawing, I decided on a composition of green framing a complementary red shape. I auditioned a variety of fruits for the central part before deciding on a peach; cabbage, spinach and spring onions maintained supporting roles.

Materials:

For this exercise, you will need:

• A selection of watercolours
• Your preferred brushes
• A graphite pencil (2H-HB)
• 300gsm hot-pressed watercolour paper
• Derwent Lightfast coloured pencils

1. Compose your scene

Spend some time exploring the composition of your objects before fixing a composition you are happy with. Work from life but take a photograph of your view first in case the objects are moved (or wilt) later.

2. Establish a drawing

Spend a good amount of time – say 30 minutes – on a pale, graphite under-drawing to establish the scale and shape of the composition, leaving a margin around the subject to allow you to trim the composition later.

A strong under-drawing will help you to fix the shapes of your subject in the face of wilting vegetables and flowers.

3. Add watercolour

Mix up some pale washes of watercolour and paint them over the drawing in simple shapes, leaving the lightest areas white – they will be largely covered up later, but will shine through the subsequent layers of coloured pencil.

Make sure the paper is entirely dry before you draw on it. I flattened out the creases in my paper beneath some heavy books, but if you are a competent watercolourist, you might want to stretch your paper first.

4. Introduce tonal shapes

Look at your subject and notice where you see the darkest tones. Use a dark colour that is prevalent through the shadows in your image to draw mid-tone shapes wherever you see dark shapes – you will be able to darken them further later in the drawing.

5. Work across subjects

With the under-drawing and tonal shapes providing buttressed support to the composition, you can work your way through the drawing, completing one subject at a time. Working through section-by-section without that under-drawing can lead to distorted proportions.

6. Focus on balance

In the final stages of the drawing, balance your tones pushing the darks darker if needed and using a white or near-white pencil to pull out highlights.

Also in the series:

• How to draw everyday objects like Richard Diebenkorn
• How to draw plants like Ellsworth Kelly

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How To Draw Fruit Shop

Source: https://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/how-to/Drawing/2510/how-to-draw-fruit-and-veg-like-giovanna-garzoni

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