Fraise Des Boise ~ Complete

SOLD

Done! I decided the red of the berries was enough to break up all the green. I was afraid adding burnt sienna would 'muddy up the waters'.

This is fairly small...10" x 7". To complete the berries I did an underpainting using indigo mixed with a little crimson lake to indicate the shadows and create volume, then finished with a few washes of crimson lake to get that strawberry red color. There's probably more I could do to this but it's time to set it aside. I'll get it back out in a few weeks or months and if I still like the way it looks it'll be 'officially done'.

Fraise Des Boise ~ WIP 1

Still today I had no idea how I wanted to go about painting this or what palette I wanted to use so I started by covering the blossoms and berries with frisket film to protect them. Then I began with a light overall wash of D/R Vivid green. I've added various greens I mixed up using indigo, Indian yellow, and perm. yellow to define the leaves. I also started working on some areas of the background and dropped in some WN Quin. gold while the paper was still wet to add interest and break up all that green.

Note: I prefer Windsor Newton's Quin. gold to Da Vinci's because it's not so orange.

I scattered some salt in the viewer's upper left corner for effect but fear I may have over-done it. I plan to darken that corner later so I can tone it down then. Forgot to mention....I'm using #140 Fabriano Uno w/c paper.

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.