Ripe Pomegranate Study

Painted from life, in Instanbul Turkey. 

I ventured out from my hotel in search of local fruit to paint and found pomegranates at a charming old fruit stall with a wood-paneled interior. I returned to the shop almost every day to buy fruit to eat and paint - strawberries, figs, melons and these pomegranates! 

I painted these pomegranates repeatedly over the course of a few days and learned a lot about how to capture their essence; the skin was reflective but subtly also matte, which was very tricky to paint. I learned from careful studying that the shape is a rounded hexagon, something I never noticed before. This is the beauty of carefully looking at something in order to paint it accurately, you learn so much about how it is built. 

For this study, I turned the pomegranates around in my hands for quite a while to find parts of it that spoke to its natural form. When I looked at the bottom of one and really analyzed what I was seeing, I noticed the beauty of the hexagon shape repeated throughout; it starts with a hexagon hinting as a border around the bottom stem where the fruit was cut from the branch. This radiates out the the full perimeter of the fruit that is not round but actually six facets. I also wanted to show the part of the fruit that was not fully red, the underside was ochres and browns that melded almost seamlessly into the ubiquitous red pomegranate color. I was very happy with the results of this painting. 

Dated Sept. 21, 2025 

Size: 11.6" x 8.2"

2025-10-I

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