Day 11: Seeing Beyond What You See...

'Pomegranate People' Glass powder sketch  4"x 4"

I'm really loving the artwork coming out of this group.  Yesterday's challenge was to create a sketch of a piece of fruit in some kind of a setting, or 'doing something'.  Let's just say we had some laughs and some of our minds have been in well... the compost heap.  Ha ha!

I chose to sketch a pomegranate yesterday, partly because I had one sitting on the counter, and partly because I love the intricate patterns of their perfectly packed pulpy seeds.  They're delicious!  Today's challenge was to use the same fruit and make it 'more'. That meant I really had to think about pomegranates.  The first time I had one was in 8th grade Latin class.  I thought they were weird, but the story about them was pretty cool.

Ancient Greeks believed the pomegranate to be the 'fruit of the dead'.

 Here's the story in a nutshell:  

Hades, the god of the underworld wanted to have Persephone for his wife.  So he kidnapped her and took her to rule with him in the underworld for eternity.  Demeter, Persephone's mother, was the goddess of the harvest.  She mourned in anguish at the kidnapping of her daughter, and refused to produce a harvest or allow any living plant to grow.  The big man, Zeus, decided that it would not be ok for the earth to die off just because Demeter missed her daughter.  So he ordered Hades to give her back to her mother...  There was a rule that if anyone should eat or drink while in the underworld, their fate would be sealed and they would remain in the underworld for eternity.  

Hades didn't want to return Persephone, and although she didn't eat or drink in the underworld,  Hades tricked her into eating a bit of a pomegranate before returning her to her mother.  Because of this, she was forced to spend half of the year in the underworld with Hades, and she was only allowed to be with her mother for the other half, and so on, for the rest of eternity.  The Greeks used this myth as an explanation for the change of seasons.  

My sketch today reflects on this story, each seed bitten sealed the doom of a soul.

Morbid, isn't it?  Sorry.  I can't turn off my brain.  I wish I could...

OK

For Day 11, your challenge is to sketch a vegetable.  Pay very careful attention to its texture.  Is it smooth? Bumpy?  Figure out a way to tell us as much about how that vegetable looks and feels as you can through your glass sgraffito sketch.  'See beyond what you see'!  With your new arsenal of tools, you may have just the thing you need to show off the texture, maybe not.  You might have to dig a little deeper to find just the right thing.  

This is getting more fun for me each day. :)

'Sunrise Ridge', alcohol ink painting for Day 11 of  the 30 in 30 Painting Challenge

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