Juicy Fruit (& Veg)

I seem to have discovered that I love painting fruits and veggies. Who knew? When I started out painting I did many roses and other flowers but I actually didn't love painting them. I thought I should but somehow they didn't ding my bell as much as I thought they should. I find the colors I can find in my crisper much more exhilarating. Why, I don't know. Somehow I feel freer with my paint colors, to get creative and just throw paint around.

In the last few days I've painted up some radishes and also my favorite stone fruit, nectarines. Yes peaches are juicy and yummy too but I don't like their fuzziness. Nectarines are peaches without the peach fuzz. Awesome! I under painted it all with both my yellows, new gamboge and pure yellow then used transparent orange, permanent red, quin pink and carbazole violet to get the skin color. The cut flesh was yellow ochre and pure yellow with a little new gamboge underpainting. Shadows done used Payne's grey. Oh, and the pit is burnt umber, yellow ochre, buff titanium and a little neutral tint for darkening. I really love how it turned out. I'm finally getting the hang of watercolors and letting the water work for me.

Nectarines

Earlier in the week I tackled some radishes. I find the green tops especially fun since I can really play with my greens and see what I can mix and discover. It really helped to get some advice from Tracey Fletcher King about adding some dark purple (I use carbazole violet) in the deep shadows. With the greens, I find I like the purple even better than using my goto Payne's grey. I think the purple has a brighter feeling. Anyway, my next fore into paint will be long beans and a complicated mango. It's bum is bright green and head is bright red, it'll be interesting to see if I can span those colors without getting mud! Always a fun experience.

Radishes

The other thing I'm up to is scanning all my art. It seems like a daunting task but really, so worth the time. I must have five to ten photos of each piece of art on my computer, all different angles. But now I can get rid of all those photos and only have one perfect scan, no shadows or bad light in any of them! All I have to do now is my Moleskines, large and small. There's only one of each but it'll be a little more difficult as you have to work with book spines etc. Hopefully it goes as well as all the rest of my art that's on single sheets. I'd seriously recommend it to everyone as now I only have a few pictures that i can now put on a USB drive and always have my art safe.

Stay tuned, I'm going to be writing a post in the near future about my paint palette, all my recommendations and stuff to make watercolor painting easier. 

Talk soon, K?

Best,

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