Say What!

I was sitting here yesterday munching on some fruit and it suddenly hit me how everything these days is catalogued and bar coded. All the fruit in front of me was labelled with bar codes and product numbers to help the grocery stores figure out what they were selling. I just wondered what people did before all this technology took over and what they would have thought about all these stickers and bar codes on their produce.

Well inspired by my friend Brian and his "So I Noticed This" blog I pondered some more and thought about where this was all going. Today those annoying stickers, tomorrow why not Genetically Engineered or Modified produce. Why not grow the produce with the bar codes right in the darn food and save having to print and stick on all these tags. LOL

So after having a break from sketching and painting for a long while, I thought this would make a good piece to practice on. So I got out my blue Mont Blanc fountain pen ink and sharpened up a handy chopstick. The sketch was all done in ink with only the stick as an application tool. I kind of enjoy doing this as the stick and ink are hard to control and it makes me concentrate but keep things relatively simple. The single colour helps me concentrate on hard and soft edges.

"From Bar Coded Stickers to Genetically Modified Produce"

[Click on image for larger view]