Inspiration is everywhere

Week 20 is Ultramarine Blue, Paynes Grey, Blue Grey & Light Grey

‘Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.’ - Miles Kington

For Week 20’s coloricombo colours I’m featuring the colour palette and using in my Colori Flori Summit lesson which is released today.

In the lesson I use tomatoes as source of shapes to be turned into imaginary florals. The humble tomato is a wonderful source of inspiration - when you slice into one, you get a wonderful variety of organic sculptural forms for sketchbook drawings and from there you explore more possibilities.

Since I am curious about all kinds of things I looked into tomatoes and found a few interesting facts about the world’s most popular vegetable.

• Tomatoes are fruit and not vegetables. Botanically speaking, they’re the fruit of the tomato plant and are further classed as berries because they contain seeds and develop from the flower of the plant.

• The first tomatoes were cultivated in South America and were introduced to Europe by the Spanish. They were yellow and small.

• The fear of tomatoes is called lycopersicophobia. In the 1700s many Europeans feared tomatoes because they believed they were poisonous. This was partly because wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which contained lead that would leach into acidic foods like tomatoes.

• The world's largest tomato weighed almost five kilograms (close to eleven pounds). It was a delicious variety tomato, grown by grown by Gordon Graham of Oklahoma in 1986.

• There are more than 10,000 different kinds of tomatoes worldwide, ranging in size from tiny currant tomatoes that are even smaller than a grape to massive beefsteak varieties. Colours can include red, yellow, orange, green, purple and even black.

• There tomato festivals happening around the world annually, the most well known is a massive food fight called La Tomatina in Buñol, Spain.

I’m not going to share multiple links about the humble tomato today, just one to Isle of Wight Tomatoes whose produce is in our larder whilst I wait for my new greenhouse plants to start producing. The photo above is from their website.

“Beyond Grey”, aquarelle crayon and pencil on paper, Esté MacLeod, 2025

Colour Combination

The chosen colours this week are Ultramarine Blue, Paynes Grey, Blue Grey & Light Grey. Use the colours along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour if you wish. Create an artwork in any medium or style.

I love seeing what you’ve create. If you’re posting on Instagram, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod and join us in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts.

The Colori Flori Summit - still time to register

Registrations to the Summit close on 25 May. Make sure you join up before then to take advantage of lifetime access. With a price of $98 USD that works out at $7 per lesson and is, quite simply, incredible value.