101 fruits task, 4 done and still counting..

Being a student a TAFE Australia,one of the task i have to produce by the end of the semester is called: "101 fruits".  Basically, you have to do 101 representations of a fruit you choose in restricted proportions and sizes, in 5cm litlle squares. I  chose to represent a Pineapple. That is really a interesting object. Its skin got that grind which you can play with. The shape of the pineapple is immediatly recognizable. The colors pretty interesting too, with a range going from yellow to blue.  Here is what i produce yesterday:

As a frenchman, i grew up reading European Comics ( which we call BD, standing for Bande Dessine ): Tintin, Blueberry, Axterix..name it i probably read it. BD is a major influence in my work.
I first drew the sketches:

I wanted to track the pineapple from the harvesting stage to the consumer mouth in few drawings. Here the first 4. You can see a map of Hawaii at the very top of the left sketche. I was not really sure it would fit in the final composition, i tried to make the landscape as much reconizable as a tropical island,e.i Hawaii. I recently went to the cinema and watch the last George Clooney movie "The Descendants", which action is in Hawaii, and there is that beautiful shot that inspired me : 

That is Kipu Ranch.

I then drew the main pineapple and its plant, redrew through Tracer paper, separating the both elements and then scan it. I used photoshop to produce the picture. I cleaned the scan by reversing the colors ( image>adjustment>invert) and clean the lines with the dodge tool. I inverted the colors again to get back to the black on white. I filled the drawings with colors (on wich i should work on ), duplicate the layers and did first the picture bottom left. As you can see, the pineapple is always the same in any picture, as the plant is at different scales and colors. I just drew the landscape background on screen using my Wacon Bamboo pen. Once the four images dones, i made the template in Illustrator, import the pics and placed them.

i have got twelve  more to do.

Another main influence in this Project is the work of artist Erik Abel who recently made the poster of the Reef Hawaiian Pro, a Surfing Comp in Hawaii:

Check it out at  www.abelarts.com .