Thanks
Here's my latest progress:
I've got a few different versions of the tomato there -- I was trying to avoid being bland and mocked up a striped tomato ala Russian Black, but when I went to render it I couldn't get it to work, so I ended up doing this sort of swirly sparkles thing, end result being a mix of 'fleshy' and 'glassy' feel.
I'd like to re-emphasize though, that Blender's material system and sculpting is really great for getting a strong idea of how I want a particular item to feel. 'Subsurface scattering' option is especially useful for anything fleshy (ie. most fruits
I've done a lot of drawings for this by now, when I look at my list, I see I've sketched:
* Apple
* Apricot
* Blackberry
* Cherimoya
* Grapefruit
* Cashews (yes, nuts are classed as fruit)
* Jackfruit
* Mango
* Peach
* Pear
* Persimmon
* Plum (yeah, I already rendered this but I can do much better than that!)
* Cherry (ditto)
* Quince
* Raspberry
* Strawberry
* Broccoli (okay, not fruit, I ended up including some veges too)
* Sweet potato (ditto)
The original list are not prioritized because the old sketches are crappy esp WRT planes
But those fruits are included in plans -- I actually based the total list on wikipedia list of fruits, so it's quite inclusive.
I'll show or link some of those drawings here when I have a large block of time available for scanning.
Some interesting things to learn here -- I wanted to reuse the capsicum color ramp but mostly couldn't because it was too desaturated to give the right intense tomato red. That kind of issue doesn't come up with low-color icons, since all the colors are approximate and cover broad areas, there's more leeway for inaccuracy (as long as it's an -interesting- kind of inaccuracy, for example the wild exaggerations of color, pattern and value encouraged by EGA palette.)
Still got about 110 palette slots free -- a few colors were reusable for the tomato, and most colors from the kumquat were reusable for the carrot.
I guess I'll start a 'part 2' image when I run out of palette.
EDIT:
Fixed up some of the texture + excessive glassiness issue:
Reasonably happy with this now, it still visibly needs about 10 more colors (currently clocks in at 21 colors FWIW)