In our household's 'culture' we have this thing where we acknowledge that the summer has been, let's say.. accounted for.. successful.. existing even, when we've managed to bake and eat a blueberry pie. That's our measure of a summer.
Unfortunately, we have not had the chance to get our hands on wild blueberries yet. The big homegrown ones we have more than we can eat, but they do not fit well in the pie as they lack in the sourness department.
But you now what doesn't lack in sourness department? Plums!
I saw this video on Youtube and for learning purposes wanted to try my hand at the visual, only digitally.
Nothing's much changed in the tools I use to draw digitally -
Huion Graphics Tablet model: H610 and MediBang Paint Pro 29.1 (ver 2023.06)
With some background and shadows surprisingly it's already starting to shape nicely.
I didn't like how I had already messed up in the sketch and how the half of the plum did not look like it was at that nice angle and it bothered me so much that I had to mess with my progress and get in there and fix it.
And that's all of the progress pictures, as by the time I was putting down colours for the other two plums I was so engrossed in the process that remembering to take more screenshots was simply out of the question.
I managed to get too in the zone and the flow state with this one, so if you'd ask me how I did it or if I could repeat it I'd have to honestly just shrug and maybe try again. Maybe even challenge myself more and try this with actual pastels.
Here's the end result. If you compare it with the video it's not a perfectly exact copy, but I kind of really like how it turned out.
And so it turns out that this.. this is a different kind of summer. A plum summer.
Don't be shy, drop a comment!
What kind of household traditions related to summer do you hold dear?
What makes a summer Summer to you?
Would you prefer blueberry or plum pie?
~Josie~
Plum crazy?
Ha ha, no actually, I'm not really much of a fan of plums to be honest due to their texture. Funny story, but the first time my parents tried to feed me a plum as a wee tiny Josie, I dug my heels in and adamantly refused to try it and said, and I quote - "Nooo, I'm not going to eat it, I know it's a tomato!"
Something about the meaty part being too squishy under the firm thin skin just didn't/(still kind of doesn't) jibe with me that well.
I've found since that both tomatoes and plums are quite delightful cooked though, so there's that..
!HUG
~Josie~
I like the yellow plums. Straight off the tree. Get them early enough and they're not squishy. A little more on the sour side but still sweet.