A Girl Uses Bananas as Canvases and Creates Art Without Using Ink or Paint

01/29/2021

Modern artists use all kinds of surfaces as canvases. You’ve likely seen drawings in sand, sculptures on pencil tips, and even stunning artistic baked goods. Well, Anna Chojnicka is here to shock you with yet another unorthodox material — the banana peel. You can find her art on her Instagram or Twitter.

Bright Side got to learn a little more about Anna’s creative process. We admire her ingenious ideas, so we collected her work that impressed us the most to share with you.

Anna doesn’t draw, she bruises.

In her work, Anna doesn’t use any ink or paint. Instead, she implements a unique technique she calls “bruising” that allows her to change the color of a banana peel and create images using only contrast between the bruised and unbruised surface.

How she bruises bananas

Anna creates her art every day. She bruises her daily banana either in the evening or in the morning before work. Using a blunt point, she presses into the peel to leave a mark. “I don’t pierce the skin but just press into it lightly,” Anna explained in her interview with Bright Side. “Over time, the bruise gets darker.”

“To create an image that has different shades, I bruise the parts that I want to be the darkest first, like the outline or a shadow. And then I do the lightest parts last,” the artist explained. “With a softer banana, you can blend shades together. So it’s all about timing. The image only looks great for a short amount of time and then gradually darkens until the banana goes black.”

Where the idea came from

Anna started to bruise bananas in March of 2020 when she had to stay home because of illness. By the second week, she was feeling better but going a little crazy from isolation. One day, after lunch, she picked up a fork and started doodling on a banana with it. She noticed that the longer she left it, the darker the mark became. Anna realized that by bruising the peel she could make art.

Anna draws inspiration from everywhere.

“I get inspired by many different things,” Anna said. “Half the fun and also half the challenge of doing this is coming up with a new idea every day. I get inspired by people, places, events, music — and I’ve even created banana art inspired by Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley, Mulatu Astatke, and David Bowie. Or it could be something I see when I go for a walk.”

Anna has also bruised some bananas to show support for different causes, including the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. She used to live in Ethiopia and has a huge love for the country, so she often bruises images that celebrate Ethiopian culture into bananas.

But coming up with new ideas is the hardest part.

An occasional art block is an integral part of any creative process. It can be hard to envision a new image every single day. “Sometimes I feel really inspired and the ideas flow freely and that’s great. But some days, I struggle to come up with something fresh.”

But the process of bruising can also be tricky. According to Anna, the hardest technical part is getting the timing right. And if you make a mistake, you can’t undo it on a banana, so you have to be precise in the way you work.

What happens afterward

“After I’ve taken the photo, I eat the banana! I’ll either eat it on that day or I’ll store a few up to make a banana cake or a banana fool, which is delicious!” Anna exclaimed. “Somebody gave me a recipe for banana and peanut butter ice cream a while back so I need to try that out. No food goes to waste.”