rating fruit by how enjoyable they are to watercolor and also eat
weather: ☀️ warm air, cool wind
critters: silent
cherry
painting: 10/10. i love all the temperatures of red and yellow and violet on different cultivars, and it's fun to paint the little stems.
eating: 6/10 for most sweet cherries and 8/10 for rainier. i just can't get past how annoying it is to eat fruit with pits. automatic 10/10 if someone else pits them.
strawberry
painting: 8/10 unless i try to get too realistic with the seeds. then it's a tedious 3/10.
eating: 10/10. god's specialest not-a-berry.
black plum
painting: 4/10. i can't get the sheen of the wax bloom or the rich colors of their insides. how do i do this in watercolor? how do i not just say fuck it and paint it with acrylic instead?
eating: 6/10. way better fruit-to-pit ratio than a rainier cherry, which they taste kinda similar to, but when i was a teenager i ate a black plum almost every day for a month (they were dirt cheap at the corner grocery) and now i don't love them anymore.
blueberry
painting: 8/10. the bloom on a blueberry is easier than on a black plum. why? why is this? anyway they're super forgiving with whatever mix of blue and red i decide to throw on there as long as the shapes and values are right.
eating: coinflip/10. a good blueberry is great, and anything i say about a bad blueberry will sound like a gross overstatement unless you've also had a bad blueberry, in which case you know exactly what i'm talking about and i'm sorry to remind you of a painful memory.
peach
painting: white peaches are 4/10, yellow are 7/10. the colors are splendid but trying to render the matte dustiness of peach fuzz makes me feel stupid, like i forgot every single thing i know about color theory.
eating: peeled white peaches are an easy 10/10. peeled yellow are more like a 7/10. with the fuzz...i dunno. feels like kissing fiberglass insulation.
apple
painting: 10/10 for many of the same reasons as cherries---lots of reds and yellows to mess around with according to cultivar...plus green. it's fun to layer the paint to create the color striations you see on a lot of apples.
eating: too many cultivars to assess (but honeycrisp is 10/10).
pomegranate
painting: 6/10. beautiful rind and shape, stressful interior. if i ever learn patience i want it to be so i can paint this thing both inside and out.
eating: 5/10 even if someone else got the arils out. the taste is just whatever for me.
pineapple
painting: 2/10. i enjoy having successfully painted a pineapple, but the more fucking pencil sketches i have to do, the less i actually want to paint.
eating: 9/10. would be 10/10 but -1 for having parts that feel like chewing sodden balsa wood but look pretty much the same as the surrounding fruit.
mango
painting: 10/10. the grade of pink into yellow into green...maybe i should try painting lovebirds?
eating: 5/10 because of the horrible pit. and there's a pine-sol note i'm not completely sure is actually real. if mango weren't always 10/10 at thai restaurants, i'd suspect i had a mild mango allergy.
orange/grapefruit
painting: 9/10. the shape isn't that interesting and the porous texture of the rind is difficult, but it's entertaining to mix the oranges and yellows and pinks right on the paper.
eating: navel oranges are 6/10, cara caras can have a 7/10. straight grapefruit is 1/10 but i can't hate it because it's 10/10 when macerated in simple syrup. bummer about it canceling out my meds.
lemon/lime
painting: 9/10. love laying down fresh springy yellow-greens. love the little nubs. love how they look sliced. same texture problem as the other citruses...
eating: -10/10, but everyone should rawdog a slice of lemon at least once.