Let’s get fruitier – wet on wet technique in watercolour painting

Building on last weeks lesson, and still only using the primary colours, I was to create more fruit but with less definition to the shadows. The banana had a clear cut shadow, so it was easy to paint a line in the darker shade, but with objects that were rounder I needed to learn how to create that depth without an obvious line…so…

Once the outline of the apple was drawn I was to mix two colours – the greeny yellow and the pinky red, ready for application. As before the underlying colour needed to be more runny (again with the technical terms) than the one that was going on top.

Step 1 – paint a layer of water to cover the inside of the apple outline

Step 2 – immediately add the yellowy/green to this to cover the whole of the apple shape

Step 3 – drop on the red colour and allow to mix with all the water resting on the paper till it all blended.

Step 4 – add a little blue to the red mixed in your palette in order to make it darker and drop this colour into the area you want to be darkest, encourage it to run by tipping up the paper. It is important to do all these steps while at the right stage of dampness, so that it all runs together well.

Next week is the orange – which would have been this week but I managed to ruin it by closing the pad which it was still wet, which it got stuck to and didn’t like it when I reopened the pad. Temperamental Orange

Print PDF

Tags: fruit, paint, primary colours, still life painting, watercolour, wet on wet