Passionfruit, Painted.

Papua New Guinea seems very far away, and my life there very long ago. And then something will happen to bring it back; a photo of a Kandrian sunset on a friend's Facebook page, or a display in the grocery store. I was surprised and delighted to find passionfruit in our grocery store last week, and immediately bought several at the exorbitant price of $3 each. They don't look especially appetizing, but they were my favourite fruit when I was living in PNG and those slippery little pulpy seeds pack a huge punch of flavour! I scoop them out with a spoon and slurp them down, enjoying every tropically citrusy tang.

Passionfruit are also fun to paint! The reddish-purple outer shell, the golden glow inside, the pinky white inner pulp. I just had to pull out my paints and see what I could do. I tried out two new pigment colours on this sketch - Daniel Smith Potter's Pink and Sleeping Beauty Turquoise. The Potter's Pink is a crazy dense clay-pink that granulates something terrible - I think it will be a fun addition to my palette but maybe more of a back-up colour than the star of the show. The turquoise is pretty - kind of a mid tone between the Cobalt Turquoise I love so much and Phthalo Blue.

It might be twenty years before I see passionfruit in the grocery store again, so I will treasure my reference photos and who knows, I might be painting this subject the next time I get a craving for exotic fruit!