Mango Mango!!

I love the word mango, much like I love the word pamplemousse, which is french for grapefruit. I really know very, very little french... I know how to tell people I don't speak it... Je ne parle pas français, and I know pamplemousse and chevalier (a knight, his horse would be cheval) but that's about it. Don't ask me WHY I know what a french horse is or his old fashioned rider either, but I DO have a great reason for knowing what is french for grapefruit. It's because all Canadian products have both french and english on them and one day when I was about to pour a glass of grapefruit juice I noticed that pamplemousse rhymes with juice... so pamplemousse juice is really fun to let roll off your tongue. 

I know that doesn't have anything to do with liking the word mango but then it is a cool word, don't you think? I always hear it in my head with the theme song "Monday Monday" by the Mamas & the Papas. Can you hear it now? Mango, Mango... da da da dadaaaa. Ya, I know I'm weird, just accept it and move on. I mean, it makes me a little more un-boring, don't you think? Ya, me too.

Anyway, I had Mango, Mango going through my head today as I painted up my mangos. I am pretty thrilled at how they turned out, especially the shadows beneath the fruit. I've been working hard to get shadows accurately onto the page without having to constantly pull them up with a tissue and start again. (Addendum: I noticed when I scanned my mangos that the lighter shadows disappeared from the scan, so just note that where the color is under the mango, it also used to have light Payne's grey and carbazole violet under it. You can just see the outer line if you really look beyond the pinky-orange.)

Mango Mango

Since several people have actually written and told me they like that I tell my process here, (thank you to those who wrote!) I'll do that again this time. Here we go. First, like most green or red fruit, I put down a layer of both pure yellow and new gamboge as an underpainting, depending on where the next layer of colors were going to go. Like, under the green of the mango went the warmer yellow (new gamboge) and under the red part went the pure yellow (which is generally a neutral yellow, not too warm or too cool). Then on the cut mango part I put the gamboge on the darker parts like the deeper crevices and the pure yellow on the highlighted parts of the cut mango. 

For the red part, I laid down transparent orange with a tiny bit of permanent red in the mid part then  quin magenta at the darkest part on the bum end. For the green I mixed a green using phthalo blue (RS) with pure yellow because Phthalo is a neutral blue (not too warm or too cool) and the pure yellow. Those would mix the best brighter green I could get right now. To brighten it a little I added a little cobalt turquoise as I find that can brighten a dull green. It worked pretty well. I added sap green in the darkest parts and pure yellow again in the light yellow parts. Then to marry the two, the red and green side, I added a bit of quin gold over both colors that "met" in the middle. Also I added some more of that color to the base, knowing I'd be adding darker shades to that as it's shadow on the fruit. 

For the cut mango I put quin gold in the deep crevices, transparent orange mixed with new gamboge for the sides of the crevices and kept working that to deepen the crevices.When I added shadow on the fruit I added carbazole violet to the bum end over the quin magenta and into the crevices of the cut fruit. The "floor" shadow is a mix of Payne's grey and carbazole violet. Then for the light shadows I added a tiny bit of transparent orange and quin pink as the fruit reflection in the shadow area. That's it, pretty much. Re-ink it all, add dots for texture (probably should have used a brown pen for that but I was too lazy to get up and find one, lol). Done.
Best,

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