color monday: distillation of summer and chemistry

Chocolate cherry, Brandywine, Yellow Pear, Sun Gold, Green Zebra. All summer, the sun and soil have been interacting with my tomato plants to produce a variety of beautiful fruit with the most amazing skin

Their colors astound me. How do you talk about the way skin reflects a whole spectrum of color on close examination but looks uniformly red or yellow or pinky brown at arm's length?

I've always thought the secret of being a great artist begins in actually seeing the world. And I mean really seeing, not just that a tomato is red, but what kind of red is it made of?

Does it have a rose pallor like the Brandywine, or does it blush green on a pink mantle like the Chocolate Cherries which is impossible to capture here because that color is so dynamic. And there is such a thing as a truly red tomato, like the brilliant Sweet Million, uncompromising in its redness.

I love the names of the tomatoes and I love their colors — a vivid distillation of summer and chemistry. This palette is derived from them.