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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Fraise Des Boise ~ Study

After adjustments to composition. I added an extra berry toward the center and got rid of unnecessary detail.

After applying edge detection

Original photo

I've grown fraise des boise aka wild French strawberries aka alpine strawberries in my flower beds for years. I grow both a red and a white variety. Originally I planted them simply for ornamental purposes but discovered the tiny berries these plants produce (no bigger than an average person's thumbnail) all summer long have the most amazingly intense strawberry flavor.

This Spring I took a few photos when they were starting to set flower and a few baby strawberries were beginning to appear. Yesterday I decided to use the fraise des boise as a subject for a painting. I selected one of those photos and to save time applied edge detection to it in my photo editor, converted the altered image to negative and printed out a copy. Then I used pencil to make adjustments to the composition. I'm not sure how detailed I want to go with this one yet but better to have too much information than not enough.

4 comments:

Jeanette Jobson said...

I think this will be a lovely piece. The interest lies trifold- the leaves, the flowers and the berries.

Alpine strawberries grow wild at the edge of the meadow on my property and I never seem to remember to harvest them before the birds and slugs do. I agree, they have a lovely taste, unlike mass produced berries that seem to be grown for size instead of flavour these days.

Billie Crain said...

I was surprised how much sweeter the white variety is than the red. The white berries never look ripe so they are deceiving.

I'm not sure how I want to go about painting this yet. I think I'll be doing a vignette in small format. Not sure what surface I'll choose either. ummm...decisions, decisions.

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