Fresh Picks

This was done in my nearby Giant supermarket where I was sitting in a little bank office. Markets are great for drawings but I don't have anywhere to put my sketchbook down on so I can make a drawing. The bank office had a desk. I've seen portable desks offered to artists, you can use them as a kind of cantilever for your sketchbook but I've never tried one. Someone of a "certain age" with European experience might remember "cigarette girls" at theaters or restaurants, who bore a little platform braced on their midriff and supported by straps over their shoulders. Cigarette samples were on the desk, and she would offer you one, saying, "Have you tried Rothmans?" Now with more civilized or at least cautious attitudes these girls have disappeared. Or are they still around? Not in the supermarket. I suppose if I really wanted to draw in the bread or vegetable department I could sneak a small board in there and balance it on a shopping cart handle. But I'm just not that desperate to draw groceries. The Fresh Pick here was seedless red grapes, whose oval packages you see in the display, $2.49 a pound.

Black ink on sketchbook page, 5" x 5", September 3, 2015.