Good Eggs, Part One

I've recently been introduced to the delectable pleasure of organic, homegrown eggs. One of the ladies with whom I take clay classes at the Museum raises her own chickens, and when she brought in a few extra dozen for any interested students, I decided to take her up on it.  I'm sure you've heard this dozens of times before, I certainly have, but I must admit that there is a noticeable difference between farm fresh eggs and the ones you pick up at the grocery store. The yolk has a wondrously saturated golden color, and a thicker consistency. The flavor is also richer, velvety even. 

Equally striking, at least to me, are the shells. With each box I get a combination of different colors, some brown, some white, but also various shades of green. The green ones in particular  caught my eye with the first box, and naturally I wanted to sketch them. Over the next few days, as I found myself scrambling eggs or using them for baking, I set a few green ones aside, drilled small holes in either end, and blew the contents into a bowl in order to preserve the shells (relatively) intact. These eggs have exceptionally hard shells, so drilling little holes into them proved a slightly challenging task. In the end I saved about four shells, though, so I can't complain. The color is washed out in this image, but you get the idea.

With the shells preserved, I set about sketching them, taking note of their basic shapes and color nuances for future reference.

As I sketched the shells, I remembered a drawing exercise that a friend of mine had taken called "Egg and Drape." I never took the class she was in myself, but it was easy enough to imagine what the assignment entailed. I decided to do my own with these shells, and set about making several study sketches.

Stay tuned to see what some of these sketches looked it.