Mandarin Party

This painting is really about those dancing leaves! They looked almost too fancy to be at my regular grocery store. I wanted to find the rhythms and connection between the different individual fruits and their leaves. Painting from life helped me look for the chroma. I searched for the reddest, darks within the oranges, and looked for the bluer, cooler highlights on the leaves, in contrast. But to be honest, it's still the beiges of the background that have my heart. My favourite painting moments were when I "cut in" with the lighter background to create crisp edges.