Apples and Pears, Practically Free

I was standing in an unusually long line at the register of the craft store waiting to buy dowel rods and things for Daughter No. 2. She needed to build a suitable cage-like thing to protect an egg in her physics class—you know, that egg-drop project that kids have been doing for years. So, I was standing there waiting and waiting and waiting, and I fell prey to the $1 bins. No. 2 said more than once, "you don't need that," but when something is only $1, of course I do need it, and there is no arguing.

I got a bag of clips, the kind you clip on chip bags to keep chips from going stale. I use those things for frozen peas and powdered sugar and whatever else I don't want spilling all over the pantry. And then I bought these—two small canvases stamped with the outline of an apple and a pear. And I bought a small pack of acrylic paint. It's all crap, I realize, but I needed it. All of it. And all for just a $1 a piece.

I have never painted with acrylics, and I suspect these crappy little tubes are not the thing to learn with, especially if all my paint brushes are watercolor brushes. Here is what I created anyway.

Yes, I know real fruit doesn't come in these colors, but that's not the point. The point is to create, and since I had no idea what I was doing, I created these artistic beauties. I feel a new obsession coming on, and I feel the need for more cheap canvases stamped with fruit.

Alan Alda and Carol Burnett made a middle-aged buddy movie years ago called Four Seasons. One of the female characters was a constipated photographer who photographed nothing but fruit and vegetables for years and years. I think I'll become her but with acrylics instead of film.