My goal in this exercise was to paint this still life study with just entirely watercolors. I was hoping to mask the few highlights, but my results just didn’t look right, so I ended up using a white gel pen for the final highlights. Let’s walk through the process and materials for this lime and lemon watercolor still life.
First, I took a photo and used a red piece of construction paper for the background. I was hoping that the red would give me a lovely contrasting color for the limes and lemon, and I think it turned out pretty well. I used a small overhead light to help with the highlights, contrast, and shadows.
Pencil sketch
I then used a graphite pencil to sketch the shape of the limes and lemon as well as penciling in the table and the shadows of the fruits into my sketchbook. I used my super handy kneaded eraser. Before beginning my art journey, I never realized how many different types of erasers there were. The kneaded eraser picks up graphite beautifully and doesn’t leave behind any annoying eraser bits. You can also shape the eraser so that you can erase small little highlights and very thin lines.
I quickly sketched the form and shape of the fruits. I have learned not to be too precious about my sketches since I know that there will be very little of the linework left to show through my final painting. I used to spend forever trying to get this part of the artwork perfect, which was silly. Especially if I progressed through the painting and found that my composition wasn’t correct. It’s much more painful to erase a very detailed sketch versus a quick drawing of overall shapes and form. In fact, once I’m happy with the sketch, I use the kneaded eraser to go over the entire sketch so that the line drawing is barely visible.
Watercolors and paint brush
With the pencil sketch done, I began the watercolor painting using a 12-half pan Meeden watercolor paint set. Now, looking at this painting tin, to be honest, I don’t think these are Meeden paints. I think that I bought the empty tin and filled them with Windsor Newton tube watercolors. This set is also quite old, so I no longer have labels for each of the colors. The next time I get a new color set, I’m going to do swatches so that I can share the names of the colors that I used. During my art learning journey, I have learned that there are vast differences between say yellow ochre, cadmium yellow medium, and lemon yellow, so I will try to be specific about the colors that I’ve used.
Suffice it to say, for this painting, I used an orange red, burnt sienna, and cadmium yellow medium for the lemon. I’m not sure of the green that I used, but it was definitely a warm green, not a cool hue. I used more or less of the green pigment to get the darker and lighter shades of the lime. For the shadows, I mixed in a tiny bit of indigo blue, but mostly used Burnt Sienna.
For my paint brush, I used my Silver Black Velvet #8 round brush. I love this brush so much. It holds a lot of water and pigment and it comes to a very sharp point. You can paint fat full-bodied strokes as well as tiny lines and dots.
Painting the background first
I wanted to paint the background first so that I could see what that large amount of red was going to look like. I first started with a wash of plain water, painting the water just on the top background. I then painted in the first layer of red. This technique allows you to keep the red pigment to just those wet parts of the painting; there wasn’t any need for me to use any masking fluid to keep the red paint away from the lemon and limes — the dry areas were enough to do that. I waited for the first layer to dry, and I then went over it with another layer, this time painting wet on to the dry first layer.
For the wood table beneath the lemon and limes, I used burnt sienna. I used a wet on wet technique again. This time, after the first layer of burnt sienna, I did not wait for the layer to dry. I immediately went in with more burnt sienna pigment, and I let the colors move around a bit to mimic the wood grain.
Once the backgrounds were complete, I then went in to paint the lemon and limes.
Using masking fluid
I had an idea to put small drops of masking fluid to block out the white highlights of the reflected light from the lemon and lime. Masking fluid is basically liquid latex, and anywhere you put it, once it dries, you’ll be able to keep the white of the paper as the brightest part of what you’re painting since it doesn’t allow any paint or liquid to get to the paper beneath it.
Unfortunately, the drops of masking fluid that I put down were way too big and far apart. After I had painted in the shades of green and yellow that I wanted to put down, I peeled off the masking fluid, and the highlights looked very unnatural. I ended up painting over those highlights and then just using a white gel pen to ink in the final white highlights.
Shadows and final layers
For my limes, I used more green pigment and a tiny bit of indigo blue to get the darker shades of the limes. I used the orangey red and a bit of burnt sienna mixed with the yellows to get the deeper shades of the lemon. For the cast shadows on the table, I used just a small amount of indigo blue mixed in with burnt sienna for the darkest parts of the cast shadow. I then went over the full shadow with a light burnt sienna wash because the shadows looked a bit reddish in my reference photo.
I’m not super happy with how the highlights came out, but I’m moving on to the gouache part of the study because I want to get used to keeping my painting “sketches” light. I want this series to be a learning process for me, and not something where I keep going over and over the initial study. I have learned that when I overwork a painting, the colors can start to become muddy.
So here is my still life study, watercolor. On to the next study!
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