Peach Studies 6 & 7, White and Black

I guess ----- the top one is under exposed, because the peaches are really on a white cloth, and yet, against the second one, on black, they don't seem so far apart. That bright spotlight does burn out the color though (on the black) where the light most directly strikes the surface.  Today on my early morning bike ride I came across a table in a drive way with plastic bags full of tiny peaches -- with leaves! - and a sign that said, Free.  So now I have plenty, with stems AND leaves. So exciting.

I am trying to find  a new way, a different way to put the paint down.  I don't know what way this is, I just need a form I am familiar with that doesn't present any new learning curve, if only that could be true, so that I can practice with the paint itself.  Almost to the end of these  peaches though, their little leaves are wet and soggy from refrigerator condensation and the peaches themselves are spongey.

Study2 of Peaches on a Wrinkled Napkin

I swear the  darks on these peaches are so deep a red/brown that they are almost black.
And here is a link to a story about Robert Rauschenberg and his famous erased De Kooning drawing: click here.

Peach Study 1

I have a slew of these peach studies coming.  They are not very thrilling, just some of the requisite slogging necessary for progress. To compensate I will offer this interesting anecdote: Renoir once had a side job painting religious scenes on Venetian blinds for Christian missionaries to use in the tropics in their conversion of natives.  That is a pretty good story (true), I may have made a mistake and started at the top.