January 2024

Bowl of Fruit Post

I’m going somewhere with this, I swear.

Every artist does it once. It’s unremarkable but essential. It’s the bowl of fruit.

When I was in college, I roomed with perhaps one of the messiest people in the southeast. It was quite an achievement for both of us, as I was not having a great year either. Still, he was a great guy, and he taught me a lot about life from his own extensive experiences. Though technically my age, he’d gone through a lot and wore those years on his face and body.

Henri Fantin Latour, 1857

One of the things he taught me was about painting a bowl of fruit. Every artist does it, sometimes multiple times. Picasso did one.

Picasso, 1918

I mean two.

1931

Maybe more, I didn’t check.

Here’s one by Paul Gauguin, whose name is French and therefore ridiculous to spell.

I love France, but come on. The language is silly.

You get the point, but I’m going to keep hammering it home throughout this post. But why? It’s just fruit. Or is it? Here’s a more modern one.

John Zaccheo, uploaded in 2020

I’m not much of an art guy. I try to get into it, but the closest I really get to admiring it is Alex Ross superhero paintings. Speaking of…

Shoot. Can’t find any of his bowls of fruit, but I’m sure he has them somewhere.

Anyway, the bowl of fruit is a classic choice for still-life. Lots of different textures and colors and shapes. There are a lot of reasons for painting fruit. Just ask Van Gogh.

1888

They’re all different, yet once you’ve seen one, you’ve really seen them all.

Writing fantasy is a lot like that. You try your darnedest not to write a Tolkien clone and wind up with yet another bowl of fruit. The fantasy market was flooded between the 1980s and today with prospective authors and their bowls of fruit. So much so that some authors advise against writing Tolkienesque fantasy stories altogether.

I wrote a bowl of fruit too. It’s called Tang of Fate. It is very basic but still quite good. It will never be picked up by a traditional publisher. I didn’t do enough with the concept. So I’m writing another. Hopefully, this bowl of fruit will find an audience. I think it will. I’m letting the story breathe this time around, letting the fruit grow, not forcing my bananas to be strawberries and so on.

Pierre Bonnard

Would you pay money for a bowl of fruit? I probably wouldn’t at this point, if I’m honest. I do like fruit, but I usually like the classics and rarely reach for new and foreign takes.

Am I still talking about writing or am I back on painting?

Why can’t it be both?

I wrote a bowl of fruit comic too. It’s called Bubblegum-Man Adventures. Pretty straightforward superhero story. You can read the whole thing on webtoon or buy a physical copy to support my devastating LEGO habit over on Indyplanet.

Making a bowl of fruit is a rite of passage. It can be a masterpiece effort or a throwaway piece, but you have to make one. People may love it or hate it, but the important thing is to learn from it.

I’ve made a lot of bowls of fruit, y’all. Probably spent too much time on them. This year, I’m going to challenge myself to create stories that push boundaries. I need to grow beyond bowls of fruit. Maybe start working with vegetables.

See. Told you.

What about you? What’s your bowl of fruit?