Cranberries

I'm not a huge fan of cranberries--the twice-a-year experience on the Thanksgiving and Christmas buffet is fine with me, and cranberry-flavored things always seem too tart, even when modified by raspberry or lemonade. But I do love how they look--the small nuances in color from pink to coral to, well, cranberry! to dark purple. So on impulse, I bought a small bag of them at the market while shopping for green beans and mushrooms and pearl onions for Thanksgiving, and this morning I threw a handful on the table on my patio so that I would have not just the cranberries but some dramatic shadows to paint. I had some happy accidents with the bleeding into some of the shadows, while others of them got away from me, but for a 30-minute endeavor, start to finish, I was fairly satisfied with my result.

Pencil, watercolor.