Last year I was commissioned to create a piece of art as a gift. The recipient is a passionate gardener, forager, and cook, so the request was for something inspired by vintage vegetable and fruit crates and salmon can labels.

Because the recipient has diverse skills and products, I packed the image with a variety of wild and domestic “produce.” And of course there had to be a sense of the setting! So all that abundance frames a view of Mt. Crillon across the meadows of Wunachích t’aakhéen (the Salmon River).

The base layer is Derwent Inktense colored pencils. These go on water soluble, then dry to permanent, so they create a solid foundation of color that won’t be muddied by water media on top. Above that I used water-soluble pastels (Neoclor), then some colored Micron pens to make outlines crisp and bright.

The biggest challenge was the lettering! I’ve always used the computer to add text. But because this was going to be framed art, I had to add it by hand. I used Procreate to do a rough layout of the arcs of the letters, then transferred the shapes onto tracing paper, worked out the shapes and sizes of the letters, and transferred the final outlines to the artwork.