HAPPY ORANGES FOR A.P.R. - AND A BIT OF DOGGEREL TOO!

These three cheeky orange pals, with their orange leaf 'hair', are my first offering for the Artist's Play Room this week, on the theme of  'Fruit'.

In fact this is my 'Two for the price of One' week, because there is a painting with a different approach to the theme at the end of the post.

I drew the oranges with a Pitt Artist's pen and painted them with my trusty Inktense pencils.  I took them into Photoshop to experiment with different backgrounds, but everything I tried took away the graphic quality I like against the white background.

So I decided that they are three LEVITATING ORANGES.

How did I come up with the idea for this design?  Well looking at all the freshly bought fruit on our kitchen side table, my eyes were drawn to the oranges.  And they reminded me of childhood, when we used to do silly things with food (which was all right as long as we ate it afterwards).  I took photos to show you my starting point -

I cut out two wedge shapes, a largish one at the back and a smaller one on the front.  Then I took piles of photographs of them in different positions, and the ones in the collage were about the best.  You should be able to see where the smile and the teeth come from for my drawings.

This reminded me of another daft thing we did.  We would eat the orange from the wedge-shaped skin, and trim it to a size that would fit our mouths.  We then used a knife (no namby-pamby nonsense for us about kitchen safety in the olden days!) to slice a horizontal line almost through the pith, and vertical lines to shape 'teeth'.  Then we would stuff the 'false teeth' into our mouths and just act daft.

I did make a set of orange peel teeth yesterday and took a photo of myself wearing them, but it was ghastly and my beloved said I looked revolting, so I decided to save you the horror of seeing the photo.

So here are the Levitating Oranges again, together with their doodling doggerel:

WHEN FRIENDSHIP TURNS TO LOVE

Meet Hal, Hattie, Hugh, three sweet orange friends,

They've vowed to be buddies till life itself ends.

Now Hattie is loved by both Hugh and by Hal,

And each of them wants her for his special gal.

Hal gives her vacations, and chocolates to eat.

Hugh gives her rings, and 'Jim Choos' for her feet.

(Hattie hasn't got feet, but she does like nice shoes

And Hugh feels his gifts will help her to choose.)

Now Hattie's no dope, she piles on the soft soap,

And vows to each chap she will one day elope.

She tells Hugh, and then Hal, that she's ready to marry,

Then leaves and shacks up with a

lemon called Larry!

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That's enough silliness.  Here's my second offering for the APR 'Fruit' theme.

This was painted a while ago, but it seemed appropriate for the challenge.  It was painted using a 'wash-off' technique, with waterproof black ink and gouache.

Hope you enjoyed both the pictures and the post - I enjoyed every minute of doing them.