Before the Harvest

I took a photo of these tomatoes in my garden... Last year!  I have had it in the back of my mind waiting to be painted, and finally felt ready to get it down on canvas last week!  Took almost a year, but that is what is great about reference photos.  You take them when you see them and then don't necessarily have to paint them right away.  It is a different way of working - Not from life, exactly and definitely not plein air.  But, I enjoy working from a photo.  I get to play around with the composition, lighting and values a lot more than when I am working from life.  At least that's how it works for me right now....  So, when I posted these in facebook, along with the gas pump and strawberries, someone thought they were pumpkins!  Interesting what happens when you look at a subject very close up.  They become abstracted a bit and sometimes hard to place.  I don't mind that.  My goal with this painting was actually to try to capture the many hues of green that were present in the tomatoes while also depicting form.  I guess I did that, seeing that pumpkins have quite a bit of form to them!

Before the Harvest, 10" x 10", oil on canvas