I wanted to set out some fruit for my pictures of still life. This way I could set a better composition. I moved the fruit around with bananas in front and in back or the oranges and apples by themselves.
I put the flower and the other pieces as needed.
In old times, 1600's and 1700's the still life paintings sometimes show fruit and other Items almost rotten. The reason for this is the artist left the fruit out for days, sometimes weeks. The fruit would rot. If your a good painter you would represent it as such.
Today with cameras and a wide availability to fruit and other Items one can paint as you wish and we don't do the prep on the canvas and the build up of canvas back grounds. Nor do we grind and blend our paints. We have readily available tube paint and can use it from the pack. So no rotten fruit.
Also artist were paid in relation to their add ons i.e. a butterfly, or a caterpillar, or other little bugs, and dew drops. these Items were the artist bread and butter. His apprentices did most of this prep work for free all he had to do was the main picture and Frame out the painting.
So we need to keep our brushes wet and paint still life.
