Avocado as Life-Drawing Model

11/4/21 Prismacolor in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

The persimmon would be easy as the warmest element, and I tossed in the pencil sharpener as a straightforward cool – it’s almost exactly the same saturated cyan as Prismacolor True Blue. But what about the avocado?

As a salad staple, at least a couple of avocadoes are always on our kitchen counter, yet I don’t sketch them as often as I could. I guess I’m not attracted to their dark hue. As a color temperature study, though, this ripe avocado turned out to be an ideal challenge, especially using a CMYK primary triad. 

At first glance, it seems to have a mostly uniform, near-black hue. But with a strong spotlight, I could see a range of reddish, greenish and even purplish neutrals. If the sharpener is the coolest blue, then every part of the avocado would have to be warmer, but not nearly as warm as the orange persimmon. I kept layering varying amounts of Prismacolor True Blue, Canary Yellow and Process Red, constantly asking myself, Is this area under the highlight warmer or cooler than the shaded side? Which is warmer, the shaded side in back, or the shaded side underneath? And so on.

If I had wanted to depict the avocado realistically, I would have made the darkest areas much darker, but I wasn’t sure I could get there using only these three primaries. More important, using the techniques I learned in Sarah Bixler’s workshops, I was afraid I’d lose the optical mixing that helps to make the color temperature differences apparent. With no identifiable or saturated hues, the avocado ended up being similar to a life-drawing model’s many neutral skin tones with subtle temperature shifts.