Title: Blood Oranges
Artist: Lois DeWitt
Medium & Materials: Color pencil on paper
Dimensions: 11" x 12"
This crisp, highly tactile kitchen still life captures a freshly sliced blood orange resting on a worn wooden cutting board. The drawing celebrates everyday culinary moments, using direct overhead lighting to explore the contrast between fibrous wood grains and the glistening, translucent pulp of citrus fruit.
Description
In "Blood Oranges," artist Lois DeWitt presents a beautifully warm, texturally complex kitchen still life across an intimate 11" x 12" format. The perspective looks down onto a classic wooden cutting board with a carved handle slot, tilted slightly diagonally to ground the space. DeWitt masterfully tracks the organic grain of the wood, utilizing tight, parallel pencil paths in shifting ambers, raw umbers, and golden ochres to replicate a weathered, sanded grain structure.
Sliced orange segments are arranged casually across the upper and central planes of the board. On the right, a half-cut blood orange faces the viewer, its ruby-red, intense cadmium-orange flesh meticulously rendered to showcase the clustered, liquid-filled pulp vesicles. Three separate triangular wedges and a tiny vertical slice spill outward across the board, casting soft, warm umber drop shadows onto the wood. The surrounding background table surface is built from broad, rhythmic, multi-directional scumbling in slate grey and pale ivory tones, creating a neutral backdrop that pushes the radiant orange harvest sharply forward. DeWitt's precise line control and expert blending turn a simple domestic subject into an exquisite celebration of form and texture.
Style & Composition
- Artistic Style: Contemporary realism and fine-art color pencil still life.
- Composition Type: An asymmetric diagonal layout structured by the large rectangular cutting board and balanced by a loose cluster of circular and triangular citrus forms.
- Focal Point: The cut half-orange in the upper right, where bright white pith lines contrast with rich ruby-red and orange pulp.
- Color Palette: A warm harvest spectrum of cadmium orange, crimson red, and golden ochre, balanced by soft ivory, slate gray, and charcoal shadow tones.
- Lighting & Atmosphere: Strong overhead interior light creates translucent highlights in the fruit pulp and soft cast shadows, giving the scene a cozy, rustic, and inviting mood.
Technique & Materials
- Mark-Making: Tight, burnished blending captures the moist glow of the orange flesh, while long, directional pencil lines define the cutting board’s wood grain.
- Layering & Depth: High-contrast orange wedges move forward visually, while the softer gray background recedes into a quiet supporting field.
- Tools Used: Wax- or oil-based color pencils on fine-grain heavyweight drawing paper, resulting in clean edges, strong color density, and controlled tonal transitions.
Inventory Status: Available for purchase online or in the gallery.
Shipping / Pickup: Shipping is available, with items securely packaged in professional archival materials, insured, and shipped globally; complimentary local pickup is also available at our 23 North Main Street gallery.
