Garlic Gathering!

What do you do when you've bought about a Kilogram of garlic (although you only needed one bulb!) you draw it! Believe me this fresh garlic is so pungent that one clove and social distancing is no problem. I'm starting to feel like Bubba Gump and his shrimp, '' you can fry it, you can bake it, you can boil it ..........'' and you still have about 10 bulbs to go! So far I've made garlic bread, roasted garlic spread, barbecued it and still those bulbs don’t seem to decrease. 

Keeping with the ''stay at home'', I decided a change of room maybe a bit of fun, so here I was sketching at the kitchen table instead of in my studio. 

Some fabulous textures and shapes in those bulbs: the papery outer layer then peeping through a wee hint of the smoother cloves within. When drawing from life the motto is always ''draw what you see not what you know is there!''. These bulbs are good proof that garlic isn’t just garlic; all different shapes and sizes and certainly not as regularly shaped as you think. 

Just out of interest I decided to use watercolour on one of my garlic chorus line! 

Remember drawing from life at school, those tight wee drawings, of course when learning that is the object but later drawing is all about capturing the essence of what you are seeing, with loose and economical strokes.

 Often in drawing less is more and the same goes for this garlic, one clove instead of five! Come to that although there are eight bulbs in my sketch, my veg bowl contains at least another six. After lockdown ends nobody will ever want to socialise with me, but I'll have exceedingly low blood pressure and never fear vampires again!