A Tribute to Garlic
What's not to love about garlic? Just about any dish with garlic is delicious and it has a huge amount of folklore behind it. What I like most about garlic though, is how it looks.
The entire bulb is wrapped in thin translucent paper – like nature's tissue paper. As you pull out each individual clove, they are also wrapped similarly. It's like a little wrapped present from the garden. Once you get the clove unwrapped, the smoothness of the clove contrasts with the papery roughness of the bulb. It's an interesting vegetable and really fun to paint.
As a tribute to garlic, I painted all the parts of the garlic – the bulbs, the paper skin, the cloves and the undersides with the hair-like roots. I chose a creamy white neutral background to not detract from garlic. However it needed a few pops of color, so I added sage and forest greens as an ode to the garden it grows in and to add some depth to the painting. I also added a little touch of maroon – red in the garlic shadows to contrast with the green. And if you look closely at the both the photos, you can see the subtle maroons in the garlic shadows.
And that is my tribute to garlic and a peek behind my easel.