Watercolor Food Illustration: Realistic Burger and Fries

1. Introduction + Welcome: Painting food with watercolor is not only super fun, but it also helps you develop essential skills such as color mixing, painting different kinds of textures, and also simplifying complex structures in order to shade them more effectively. So if you'd like to hone your skills in any of these key areas, or you simply enjoy painting food as much as I do, this course is for you. Hey, everyone. My name is Erika, and I'm a traditional media artist working with a range of drawing and painting mediums. My day to day life revolves around creating and selling art, as well as sharing helpful resources with beginner and intermediate artists looking to grow, which I share over on my website, my YouTube channel, and, of course, my membership site. I have over 15 years of experience working in creative and artistic fields, first as a graphic designer, and then I worked as head art teacher in a school environment for many years. After some time working as art teacher on a local level, decided to take my message to the online space to be able to help more people all over the world, and I've been growing my online business for the last six years. It's been absolutely amazing to be able to reach more people, and I am very passionate about continuing to grow as an artist myself, as well as continuing to encourage and guide others so that they too can enjoy all of the beautiful things that pursuing an artistic path can bring. In this course, I take you through my entire painting process step by for a realistic watercolor food illustration piece, which features a delicious juicy burger and crispy fries. I share my favorite techniques and explain how it is exactly that I layer watercolor in order to arrive at a level of realism that I enjoy while keeping things painterly and simultaneously making sure that I'm arriving at that beautiful watercolor glow at the end. Throughout this course, we not only practice foundational watercolor techniques such as wet-on-wet wet-on-dry and layering for depth, but we take it a step further onto more challenging topics and techniques, such as bringing in masking fluid to help us protect small shapes and complex highlights. We paint a metallic object with reflections, and throughout this course, we're really focusing on developing that wide range of values or tones needed for realistic results from lights to mid tones to darkest darks, which really involves using our observational skills observing that reference photo so that we can do our best to recreate those value or tonal relationships in our painting. If you're new to watercolor, I would highly recommend checking out my watercolor one oh one course here on Skillshare, where I share must know information on this medium that makes it different from other painting mediums and also provide essential exercises that will help you start developing your water and brush control. Aside from that, I have other more beginner friendly watercolor courses available for you here, which will help you build essential skills so that you can tackle something like this with more confidence and greater success. I would recommend this burger and fries course to artists who have been working with watercolor for some amount of time. Maybe you consider yourself to be intermediate or more advanced. You have a certain level of water and brush control developed, and you have practice with basic washes. Let's go ahead and jump into our next class where I'm going to be explaining about the course project that we're going to be working on together. 2. Course Project: By the end of this course, you'll have completed a realistic watercolor food illustration piece, which features a delicious juicy burger and crispy fries. As you move through these classes, you're going to be gaining so many tools and tips that will help you tackle future food paintings with greater ease and enjoyment. I've broken up my painting process into phases, each of which has its own class. I want to encourage you to take your time with each phase. Spend as long as you need to with each video, going back to certain parts of the video as needed, you may decide to watch the entire class video to see how I move through that phase and then go back and follow along, but spend as long as you need to with each video before moving on to the next and make sure that you're allowing each layer to dry before working over. Included a class in the beginning where I swatch out all of my paint colors that I'm going to be bringing in on a scrap piece of watercolor paper so that you can see what they look like on paper. And I also offer alternatives or substitutes in case you don't have that specific paint color so that this way, you can set yourself up for success. I've prepared a set of downloadable files, which you're going to be able to find in the Projects and Resources tab right below any of the class videos. Simply click on this tab, scroll down a little bit, and you're going to find a section that is titled Download Resources. Click on any file that you wish to download and it will be saved onto your computer or device. You're going to find the outline sketch that I have prepared for you, which is what I would recommend tracing over and transferring onto your watercolor sheet. You'll also find the high resolution reference photo of this burger and fries, which is what I would recommend observing as you're moving forward with the painting process so that you can see changes in color and value or tone also texters as you're moving forward with your layering. You'll find a photo that I took after having placed my masking fluid in case you'd like to use it as reference as you're placing your own, a photo of my finished painting, which you're free to use as reference as you're working and your supply checklist, which includes the list of colors that I'm going to be bringing in. To post a photo of your work here on Skillshare, all you have to do is click on the Projects and Resources tab. Once you're in, you'll see this purple button on the right that says submit project. When you click on this button, you'll be taken to a new page where you'll easily be able to both upload a photo of your piece, as well as share any thoughts, experiences, struggles or questions that you might have for me. Here, you can create a title for your project and click on that larger content section underneath. And if you want to add in that photo at the beginning, you can go ahead and click on that image icon on the bottom. Find the photo that you're wanting to share on your computer or device, select that file, click open, and it will be immediately added into this content section. Then under your image, share anything that you'd like, whether it's struggles, questions, wins, aha moments that you might have had throughout this course. Anything that you'd like to share, I always love hearing from you. At the bottom of this content section, you'll see different icons. One is for formatting your text. The other is to add Emojis, the Adimage icon, which we just talked about, and you can also embed link. Free to add in even more pictures if you'd like. They can be process pictures, supply pictures. And over here to the right, we have this preview area where we essentially see a thumbnail or cover image for your project. You can go ahead and change it to a title image that you have created in a more horizontal format. Or you can just go ahead and leave it as is and have it just be a cropped section of one of the images that you have uploaded into your content area. It's up to you. Once you're ready, go ahead and scroll back up. Click on the green Publish button, and you'll be all done. If you'd like to share your work over on Instagram, please do make sure to tag me at Erika Underscore Lancaster Underscore Art. I love seeing your work over there and giving students shoutouts in my stories. And, of course, go ahead and tag the Skillshare account, too. It goes a very long way and inspires other students to share their work as. Skillshare is a safe learning space for all of us to continue growing together. So make sure that you're using this gallery, and let's all connect and help each other out. I can't wait to see your work and to help out with whatever you might need. Let's move on to our next class. 3. Supplies: I'm going to be working on a sheet of cold pressed, 140 pound or 300 GSM watercolor sheet, and this is 100% cotton. It is very important that you use watercolor paper that is suitable for the techniques that we're going to be bringing in. We're going to be doing plenty of layering, and we're also going to be bringing in masking fluid, as well as scrubbing. So make sure that you're using quality watercolor paper. The size of the watercolor sheet that you're going to see me work in is exactly 10.1 " in height times 7.4 " in width. I'm going to be using my watercolor set that includes paint from both Windsor Newton's Professional line, as well as a few from Daniel Smith. I'm going to be using a total of nine different colors, and these colors are new gamboge, raw sienna, lemon yellow nickel titanate, burnt sienna, undersea green, French ultramarine, cadmium red, Alzarin crimson, and Prussian blue. You do not need to use the exact same colors that I'm going to be using. I'm going to be sweatching out all of these colors for you on a scrap piece of watercolor paper and offering some alternatives before we get started with the painting process so that you can replace whichever you don't have with something that is similar. I brought in a total of eight different brushes throughout this process, a size six mop brush for larger washes, four rounds in sizes 14, eight, six, and zero. A size eight scrubber brush. Don't worry if you don't have one. For a very long time, I simply used a stiffer bristled round brush to do any scrubbing that I might need to do along the way. So that's fine. And I also brought in a couple of extra multimedia cheaper brushes for my masking fluid placement and to have on hand for extra scrubbing. Placed my masking fluid with a size zero round brush, and it was just a cheaper old brush that I had in my studio. I would never recommend using one of your good watercolor brushes or any brush that you really enjoy to place your masking fluid. I will explain what I do to keep my paintbrush bristles protected. I use a brush with masking fluid, but no matter what protective method it is that you use over time, your bristles will become more and more damaged. And this is why I always place my masking fluid with alternative tools, such as toothpicks or wooden skewers or an old toothbrush. But whenever I have to place it with more precision and I need to use a brush, it is very handy to have older, cheaper brushes on hand, as well. Have my container with clean water on hand. You're, of course, always free to use two or even three containers if you don't want to have to change your water as often. You can use one container to rinse out your paintbrush bristles and another to bring out water into your mixtures. Or for any of those techniques where you need cleaner water, I have a few of my blue Scot absorbent towels, which is what I use to stay on top of water control. You can always use any type of towel or even regular kitchen paper towels, but it is very important to have them on hand. I really enjoy these because these towels are thin and untextured, so I can go in and do blotting and lifting if I need to along the way, and I won't be left with splotchiness and texture on my painting. Have a few scrap pieces of watercolor paper on hand to test out colors and consistencies along the way. I'm using colorless masking fluid from Windsor and Newton. I have my 1 " masking tape. This is what I use to tape my watercolor paper down onto my black cutting mat. If you're nervous that removing your masking tape at the end might damage your watercolor sheet. A little tip that I can provide is run your pieces of tape over your clothes a couple of times before you tape it down. Order to weaken that adhesive, and that'll make it a lot less likely that you'll damage your watercolor paper at the end when you remove it. I'm taping my watercolor paper down onto my cutting mat, which is flexible, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend using a cutting mat as a backing board. It is way more helpful to use a sturdier, stiffer backing board when you're painting with watercolor so that you can do any tilting or rotating as you go in order to keep the process more comfortable for you and maybe even use gravity to your advantage when you're working on larger washes, especially. Because I am filming on a flat horizontal surface and I can't really be moving my piece around when I am filming a tutorial, it doesn't really make much of a difference to me. But when I am working on personal watercolor pieces, I do use a stiffer board. For this one, because I knew that the painting process was going to take a long time in and of itself, I traced over my reference photo, and I like using tracing paper for tracing and transferring and preparing my outline sketch on my watercolor sheet, but you're free to use whichever transferring method you prefer, whether it's carbon paper or a light box or anything else that you enjoy. I would recommend tracing over my outline sketch that I am providing for you as opposed to the reference photo to make the transferring process easier and more straightforward. However, I am also attaching the high resolution reference photo, which is what I would recommend observing as you are actually painting so that you can see color changes and values and also textures. If you're interested in learning how to use tracing paper for your transferring and exactly what I do to prepare my preliminary sketch before getting started with a watercolor painting process, I would recommend checking out my watercolor one oh one course here on Skillshare because I've included a bonus class at the end where I share my entire process step by step, and I provide lots of tips. Supplies that I am sharing here, which are an HB and a two B pencil, as well as a soft graphite eraser and a kneadable eraser were used during the tracing and transferring process. Go ahead and collect your supplies, download the files that I'm making available for you in the projects and resources tab and see you in the next class. 4. Swatching Colors: I'm going to use a total of nine different colors for this painting. I'll be swetching all of these colors out for you right here and we'll be providing alternatives. In case you don't have these specific paint colors, you can just use something that is similar. The first color that I'm going to be swetching out for you is new gamboge. New gamboge is a warm yellow, looks like this. If you don't have new gamboge, you can use Indian yellow, nickel azo yellow, cadmium yellow deep, Hansa yellow deep, or any warm yellow. The next color that I'm going to be swatching out for you is raw sienna, which is a very light, neutral, beige golden brown neutral which looks like this. If you don't have raw sienna, you can use yellow ochre, Mars yellow, yellow oxide, or anything similar to that. The next color that I'm going to be swatching out for you is lemon yellow nickel titanate. It's a cool yellow, which looks like this. And I do want to mention that I didn't really like this lemon yellow nickel titanate because it's pretty opaque, and it really mutes down the greens that I'm going to be creating in my lettuce. We're going to be adding this cool yellow into our greens to create lighter greens for the lighter values in the lettuce. And any traditional lemon yellow is likely going to help you arrive at more vibrant, colorful looking greens than the ones that I'm going to be creating because of this yellow that I am using. If you don't have lemon yellow, you can use any cool yellow such as Henza yellow light or cadmium yellow light. The next color that I'm going to be swetching out for you is burnt sienna, which is a warm reddish brown. It looks like this. If you don't have Burnt Sienna, you can use red ochre, quinacrodon, burnt orange. The next color that I'm going to be swetching out for you is undersea green from Daniel Smith. Undersea green is a pretty dark rich, deep, mossy natural looking green. It's also considered a warm green. If you don't have undersea green, you can use olive green, sap green, or anything similar to that. The next color that I'm going to be swetching out here is a zarine crimson, which is a cool red, and it looks like this. If you don't have a zarine crimson, you can use permanent Alizarin, Pyl crimson, permanent parmine or any cool red. Moving on from there, this next color that I'm going to be swetching out is cadmium red, which is a warm red. It looks like this and I'm going to be using it for the tomato slices. If you don't have this red, you can use Pyl scarlet, scarlet lake, vermilion, or any warm red. And finally, we're also bringing in two blues, a warm blue and a cool blue. This blue right here is French ultramarine from Windsor Newton. French ultramarine is a warmer blue and it's very similar to traditional ultramarine blue. The only reason why I have French ultramarine is because that's what they had at the art supply store when I went to buy my colors. But usually I just have traditional ultramarine blue in my palette as my warm blue. Ultramarine blue is super versatile. I love it for creating grays and also for darkening browns, which is what we're going to be doing with this one in this painting. If you don't have French ultramarine, traditional ultramarine, ultramarine deep, ultramarine finest, ultramarine permanent, anything like that will do just fine. And if you absolutely don't have ultramarine blue, you could also use cobalt blue. And finally, here is Prussian blue, which is a cool blue. We're going to be mixing together Prussian blue and a zarine crimson to create our purple for our onion. If you don't have Prussian blue, any cool blue will do just fine, whether it'sTo blue, green shade or anything like that. All right? And that is it for our paint colors. 5. Applying Masking Fluid: Let's get started with the first step in this process in which we're going to be placing a little bit of masking fluid here and there for some textures for keeping some important highlight shapes protected throughout the process and little things here and there. I know that in the reference photo, we don't really have any sesame seeds on the bread. I want to bring in some sesame seeds because I just think that it'll add a little bit of extra texture and intrast to the piece. Another thing that I'm going to be masking out are some important highlights here in the metal. It is very important to create those bright highlights in metallic surfaces because of their smooth nature. I'm also going to be masking out some little edges and highlights here and there, especially throughout the lettuce and in the onion and the tomato. So what I have with me right here is a very small size zero round brush. And this is a cheap multimedia brush that I use for masking fluid placement. I would never recommend using your favorite watercolor brushes to place your masking fluid because masking fluid is liquid latex and it will damage those bristles over time, even if you do what I did here, which is coat your bristles with some sort of washing soap, liquid hand soap, something like that. Coat your bristles with that soap, and it will protect them to a certain extent. But even with that extra protection, the bristles will become damaged over time. I'm going to pour a little bit of this masking fluid into this lid. This is colorless masking fluid from Windsor and Newton. I would not recommend using the lid of your masking fluid bottle to pour your masking fluid into because it will dry along the edges and make your bottle more difficult. Open. So if you have any other small container to pour your masking fluid into, I would recommend using something else. I'm going to start with the sesame seeds and I'm just going to take a little bit of this masking fluid at a time and I'm going to create little shapes just here and there. Especially in the top part of the bread. I have variety in mind when I am masking out these little teeny tiny shapes. Variety in terms of how these shapes are rotating or placed on the bread. Also in terms of how they are clustering together, you definitely don't want to have any patterns or place them in a very organized way because it's not going to end up looking natural. I have added the sesame seed shapes and also the major highlights in the metallic cup on the left in your outline drawing. So all you have to do is fill those in. And I know that it's hard to see where I'm placing my masking fluid in this video because I am using colorless masking fluid. But in the resources that I am making available for you as downloads that you're going to be able to find in the projects and resources tab, you'll find this photo that I took after having placed my masking fluid, where I have enhanced that yellow look. This way, you can more easily see exactly where I have placed my masking fluid, and you can use that photo as reference as you're placing your own if you wish to. Angle your paintbrush in different ways, sometimes press down a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. It will help you create a nice variety in those little shapes. I want to play some along the upper edge of the bread as well, right over my pencil line. Just a few more sparse ones, sparse sesame seeds coming down the bread shape. Take a little bit of masking fluid at a time. That's enough. Now I'm going to go ahead and just mask out some little shapes in the mayonnaise. These will be the brightest highlights. I'm just making little shapes here and there, abstract, irregular shape, similar to what I see in the photo, but I'm not trying to create a carbon copy of the reference photo. This is a painting. It's an interpretation. As long as I am masking out a few highlight shapes in the mayonnaise, because when we paint that off white color, we want to make sure that we are bringing in a lot of that paper as part of the piece and leaving it uncovered. I also see a highlight shape in the tomato. I'm going to mask that out. A larger one and then a smaller one over here just a few little highlight shapes in the onion as well, thinner shapes in the onion. Not all of the light values that you see are actual bright highlights. Most of the light values that you see are actually a very light version of the color and not a bright highlight. Do you have that in mind? You don't have to mask out every single light value shape. Here I see a teeny, tiny highlight along the upper edge of the onion. I do want to make sure to stay away from the look of outlines. If you just go in and trace around a shape with your masking fluid, when you remove it, you're going to end up with a white outline all around that shape, and that's not going to look very natural. So avoid outlines when you're looking for realistic results. Mask that out. I'm going to do just a few little markings with my masking fluid randomly here and there throughout the meat. These little highlights in the meat are going to help me create that texture there. Less is more, there is no need to go overboard and make sure that the highlight shapes that you're creating in the meat are very, very small, almost like teeny tiny specs of masking fluid. Sometimes it even helps to splay out your bristles and just go in with a bit of a scribbling motion. The last thing that I'm going to do for the burger here in terms of my masking fluid placement is, I'm just going to go over some edges of my lettuce shapes here. Because there is so much overlapping with the lettuce leaves, the shapes created by the lettuce are so complex by just masking out a few edges here and there, I can simplify the process for myself and I can better understand what I am painting. Just a few little edges here and there, don't overdo it. We're not trying to leave a white outline around the lettuce or anything like that. I'm just masking out some little edges to help simplify the painting process for myself. We want to keep our highlight shapes small. And when it comes to the metal, we have these bright highlight shapes that we have to make sure to add in so that we can create that metallic look. I've added these shapes to your outline drawing, but I have to sketch them in. Make sure that you're applying your masking fluid in thin layers so that it dries faster. And I'm just going to mask these shapes out. My shapes are a little bit different from those in the photo. Throughout this painting process, you're going to hear me mention the words abstract, irregular shapes again and again as I am continuing to develop my layering and my realism. And with this, what I'm referring to are simply shapes that are loosely painted that have irregularity throughout them, that have wider areas and more narrow areas. When we're developing realism, noticing those different value shapes which are abstract and irregular is very important, so that we can make those happen in our painting. It's by recreating those abstract, irregular value shapes, light shapes, midtone shapes, and darkest shapes that we see in our reference photos that we're able to achieve higher levels of realism. But stay away from blocky, solid geometric shapes, stay away from outlines, stay away from patterns or very perfect drawn out shapes and keep coming back to this idea that what you're painting are abstract shapes. And as long as those shapes, their location and their size is similar to that in the photo, you're going to achieve realistic results, especially if you have in mind that what you're painting is three dimensional, and it is being affected by light in the environment, which creates lighter areas and darker areas and shadows. Going to do a little bit of an edge here right above the highlights. With that, we're all done with the masking fluid. I'm going to pour the rest of this masking fluid back into the bottle. I'm going to go rinse out these bristles and we'll allow everything to dry for at least ten to 15 minutes and then we can get started with the painting process. 6. Bread + Fries First Layer: The first thing that we're going to be painting is the first layer in the bread. I'm going to be using new gamboge for my lightest brightest color. You make a little puddle of plain new gamboge right there on my palate. Raw sienna is going to be my next color getting into the neutrals here. Then for this first layer, I'm also going to be bringing in some burnt sienna. Burnt sienna is a medium, reddish brown. In this layer, what I'm trying to do is create my lightest values in the bread. There you go. I have my little puddles of color that I'm going to be using for this first layer, new gamboge, raw sienna, burnt sienna. I'm going to start with the lightest color and then I'm going to add a little bit of this into this, that I'm going to use this, that I'm going to add a little bit of this into this to create a nice range of values from lightest values and starting to get into the mid tones in this first layer. Now, if you observe the reference photo, the light is hitting the hamburger and the fries from the left. Notice how the highlights in the metal are on the left. Most of the lighter values, even in the French fries and in the buns and even the highlights in the onions and the tomato, they are to the left of these structures. I want you to have that light position or location in mind as you're developing your values throughout all of these different elements in the still life arrangement because keeping the lighting consistent is essential for any level of realism. I'm going to be using my size 14 round brush for this. I think it's appropriate for this size. I'm going to go in with a T consistency of my first lightest color, which for me is the new gamboche, T consistency, very water down. With this first color, I'm going to start right here and I'm just trying to develop a flat pale layer of color all throughout this bun here. Painting over all of this shape. And adding my paintbrush pitles over everything more than once because I know that if I just go over everything once, make my way from left to right or whatever the case may be, by the time I make my way across to the opposite edge, that first section is already going to be try. You want to keep coming back to that area where you started to re wet that and then pull that paint, take a little bit more water, take a little bit more paint if you need to, and fill in that entire shape. I'm going to make my way down over here because this is B as well. Right? Work on that until you have that nice pale color and you see a nice even sheen all throughout the bun shape. Because what you want to do next is you want to start developing that value range in this area by bringing in your other colors. I'm going in with the raw sienna now, more of a coffee consistency this time and you can even create a bridge color by adding a little bit of your first color for me the new gamboge, add it into your first neutral, which is the raw sienna. In this way, there's not a big jump from one color to the next. I'm starting to drop in this midtone where I see mid tones in that reference photo. We were already observing how the light is hitting the objects from the left. This means that overall, when I see this at the end, I want lighter values on the left, darker values on the right, add a little bit more raw sienna into my puddle here. I'm getting a little bit darker and a little bit darker at a time. I do want some irregularity even in this light area, so I do want to drop in some of my light is neutral there to create some irregularity in the bun. I know that by the end after I've developed my layers, I'm going to have more dark values on the right and lighter values overall on the left. So now I'm going to go ahead and start using my third color. Again, you can add a little bit of your middle color into the dark discolor that you're using in this layer if you're afraid to just develop too much contrast right off the bat. This is not about creating a carbon copy of the reference photo. Yes, we are considering the three dimensionality of what it is that we're painting, but we're not trying to create a carbon copy of the reference photo. Great. See how I've managed to develop a nice range of values and values ultimately are what makes something look realistic. So it is essential that you plan for the colors that are going to allow you to develop that range of values before jumping in. Otherwise, you're going to be scrambling and trying to decide on how you're going to be developing your values as you go and things are going to start trying on you and I really want soft effects in this first layer. Things are still wet and workable for me because I took my time with that first palss layer. So if I wanted to, I could continue developing my range of values and continue developing those darker mid tones. By this point, I can go in with almost plain burnt sienna and drop it into little sections where I'm looking to push the contrast, create a little bit more of a toasted look in the bread. Sometimes I'm just touching the tip of my brush to my paper, creating little teeny tiny blooms. If you want to go back to a previous color, you can, but you do have to make sure that your paper is still wet and workable. You don't want to continue dropping in color if your paper is already starting to dry in certain sections because you can create back runs. If you do go into dark too fast, go in to do some lifting with the clean and only slightly damp bristles of your paintbrush, or you could even go in with your absorbent towel, do a little bit of blotting in that area. I'm going to do the exact same thing in the bottom bread, starting with the new gamboge and making my way gradually toward the burnt Siena. Go to start with my T consistency new gamboge, I'm going to fill the entire shape in, take your time. Go back to where you started, re wet that area and just make sure that the color is nice and pale. T consistency yellow. Going back to where I started, re wetting gently. Making sure that I have some irregularity right here along the upper edge where the lettuce is going to be. I see that nice even sheen and that pale yellow. Now I'm going in with a sienna plus just a little bit of that new gamboge and dropping in this color and shadow areas that I see in the photo, taking clues from the photo but not trying to create an exact replica of what I'm seeing, allowing the paint to do its thing and not overly blending or trying to manipulate the paint too much. Maybe add a little bit more of your raw sienna before going in with the burnt sienna. It's all about getting those transitions. You can see how I have nice soft effects because I've been working wet into wet, dropping in my colors while the paint is still wet. Going in with my raw sienna plus burnt sienna. Now I really want to focus on those shadow areas. Here I'm thinking of how the lettuce is creating a shadow on the bun. Darker values on the right. Maybe just a little bit of a mid tone here. Notice how I have some little sections where just the plain u gamboge is shining through uncovered. That's exactly what I want. Improve the shape of the bun here. Now I'm adding more burnt sienna into the mixer, going in with a thicker version of the burnt sienna and darkening some areas even more while the paint is still wet. Adding some shadows making some sections look a little bit toasty. Maybe adding a little sense of irregularity throughout the bread. By making little blooms. To create a bloom, all you have to do is touch the tip of your paintbrush to your paper, allow a little bit of that paint to flow down the bristles onto wet paint and that's going to create a little bloom. So that is it for the first layer in the bread. We need to allow that to dry. In the meantime, let's switch to working on something else. For the fries, we're going to be using almost the same colors as we use in the bread. But the fries, I'm going to tackle a little bit differently. We're going to be painting the first layer in all of them at once, and then it's not until the second and the third layer that we actually tackle those fries individually and separate them visually. I'm going to add a little bit more of my plain ugamboge onto my palette here. And I want to go in once again with a t consistency. I'm going to take a little bit of this new gamboge, pretty water down right here from the edge of my puddle, and I'm just going to paint all of these fries at once. All of them together. Make sure that you don't paint the paper accidentally because we want those paper shapes that we're able to see to look whitish, if you start painting yellow in those shapes so we want to make look white, they won't look white anymore. Running my paintbrush crystals over everything again so that the entire shape stays wet for a little bit longer. When you see that even sheen with that pale color, I remove that color from my paintbrush bristles and I go in with raw sienna plus a little bit of new gamboge. My aim here is really to just start developing a bit of a range of values in the fries I'm bringing to mind the three dimensional structure of fries even at this point. Because I am painting all of the fries together, I am not trying to develop those darker mid tones and darkest darks just yet. I'm going to leave the values in my fries pretty light at this point, lighter than what I used over here. I want some areas with just the plain gamboge shining through. Other areas where it looks more like a raw sienna, a bit of a lighter mid tone, remove that color from my paintbrush crystals, remove that excess water, and then I'm just going in finally with a mixture of burnt sienna and raw sienna. Don't want to go too dark. Dropping in this color where shadow areas would be, maybe where the most toasted areas are as well in the fries. I'm just trying to develop a bit of a range of values here. Don't want to go too dark. We'll separate these out later for the second layer. That's more than enough. I'm going to just clean up some edges here. 7. Meat + Metal Cup First Layer: For the meat, we're going to be repeating the burnt sienna and we're going to be adding ultramarine blue into the burnt sienna. Here's some plain burnt sienna and then over here right beside this, I'm going to create a second puddle of burnt sienna. The second puddle is going to be darkened with some ultramarine blue. I'm adding a little bit of my ultramarine blue into the burnt sienna until I get a darker brown, a chocolatey brown. Shift and change the ratios of these colors in your mixture until you get a chocolatey brown. You can even test out your color on a scrap piece of watercolor paper. I'm going to use my size eight round brush and the process is going to be very similar to what we've been doing so far. We're going to go in with the first color in a pretty water down state, like a T consistency. If you need to add more water into your puddle, I would advise adding water into one of the edges of your puddle and then taking your paint from there. Process is the same. I'm going to go in with this first color, which is the plain Bird sienna, paint in the entire shape of that meat, making sure that I'm not painting lettuce or cheese. I don't want browns in the cheese. Then once we have that palest first layer in, we're going to develop those darker values incrementally by first going in with a more thick version of my plain Bird sienna, and then I'm going to start going in with my darker brown, which is the burnt sienna with the ultramarine. Let's go right in. Remember to make your way down a little bit toward the right. If you're right handed or toward the left, if you're left handed, come back to where you started and re wet. Make your way down a little bit more. Come back to rewet. Make your way down a little bit more and come back. Try to keep a irregular edge along the bottom there where the lettuce is you'll likely notice that I changed the lettuce shapes a little bit. If you go into dark, you can stop what you're doing, do a couple of dips in your container of water to remove some of that paint from your paintbrush bristles and just go in to smooth things out and soften things out with more water in your brush. Just make sure that you're not going in with too much water because you can certainly start disturbing that paint, and that is how you arrive at these shapes that look like they have an outline to them, a darker outline because you're dropping in too much water and it's pushing the paint out toward the edges. It's all about water control, and the only way to get good at that is by painting a lot. All right. I'm just going in over everything one last time, making sure that I have a nice even sheen. A nice irregular edge along the bottom. Can see how pale the color looks. That's what I want for that first layer, a pale flat looking color, a nice even glistening, adding a little bit more of my burnt sienna into the puddle, thicken it up a little bit, observing that reference photo, bringing to mind the three dimensionality of what it is that I'm painting, curves, nooks, crannies. Where is their overlapping taking place? Where is the lettuce creating a shadow? And that is where you start to darken. So we do see pretty dark values in the meat, but that does not mean that we can skip over creating the lighter values. Lighter values and darker values in that range is absolutely necessary everywhere throughout your piece if you're going for realistic results. See how I'm just touching the tip of my brush to my paper sometimes, creating little blooms that helps convey that meat texture. Going in with my darker version of my brown now, which has the ultramarine blue in it. Always thinking of taking steps toward my darkest values incrementally and touching the tip of my paintbrush to my paper, especially in the dark shadow areas. What are the areas that I want to make lighter? What are the areas that I want to make darker? Trying not to cover up my first layer completely and keeping my lighter values in some areas. Gonna go a little bit darker now. I like my meat well done. I don't want my meat to look super red and bloody or anything like that, but I do want to create a nice range of values. Okay, I'm gonna go a little bit darker now. Burnt sienna, adding even more ultramarine blue. Much darker this time. Things are still wet and workable in that meat shape, so I can go in and continue pushing values. But all I am doing here is continuing to place more of my darkest brown over my lighter brown layer while it's still wet. I'm making sure not to overly cover up that first layer because I do want to keep some lighter values in some areas, and I don't want the meat to look burnt either. Here I'm doing a little bit of lifting before allowing everything to dry by using the clean and only slightly damp bristles of my paintbrush as a little absorbent sponge, lifting up some excess color, especially in those meat areas nearest the light, continuing to bring to mind the three dimensional structure and the curves of this meat patty and continuing to give it structure by developing lights, mid tones, and darks. Until I've arrived at a nice range of values that I think is good for this layer. Alright, that's great. I'm going to leave that alone, allow that to dry. In the meantime, let's work on the first layer in a metal. I made sure to change my water before working on the metal. For our gray throughout the metal, we're going to be using the same combination that we were just using in the meat, which is burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. However, we want to add even more ultramarine into the brown until we get a gray. Aside from that gray, we also need to prepare some other colors that are reflected on the metal. You notice in the reference photo, we see a little bit of red created by the tomato slices, also a little bit of green created by the lettuce and a little bit of beiges and browns, which are the bread reflected on the metal. We need to prepare those colors as well, have those ready to go because we're going to be dropping those other colors into the gray while it is still wet. It is very important that when you drop in those other colors, the reflections on the metal, that the gray is still wet because we don't want those other color shapes to be sharp and defined. We want those edges to be soft. Let's go ahead and prepare the colors that we need first, starting with my gray, starting with the Bergsiena plus ultramarine blue mixture, a good amount of each color until I arrive at a gray. Right now, I am going for a pretty water down color mixer, tea, the coffee consistency, still looks a little bit brown to me, so I'm going to add a little bit more ultramarine blue, test that again. That looks more gray to me. I'll leave it at that, remove that gray from my paintbrush crystals, remove that excess water. Go to add a little bit of my cadmium red right here, which is the color that I'm going to be using for the tomato slices, warm red. And creating a little bit of my green that I'm going to be using for the lettuce, which is undersea green. Maybe I add in a little bit of my lemon yellow just because my undersea green is pretty dark as is. Depends on the green that you're using. You might be able to go in with just your plain green or you can go in with a bit of a lighter green, which we're also going to be using in the lettuce, which is your base green plus a little bit of your lemon yellow. And then aside from that, I'm going to prepare a little bit of my raw sienna here with a little bit of burnt sienna. Get a color that is similar to what I was using in the bread before. So I have those three colors that I'm going to be using for the reflections. Now we can go right in the water down version of our gray because we're using ultramarine, which is granulating, it's likely that you're going to see some separation happen in your puddle and also some separation happening when the gray is drying on your paper that is normal and it's a beautiful effect that is going to add interest to the piece, going in with water down gray and my size 14 round brush. I'm going to start painting in that first lightest layer all throughout the metal. And because I have protected those highlights with masking fluid, I don't have to worry about those. Dipping my brush in my container, softening the gray a little bit of water in my brush, running my paintbrush bristles over everything a few times. As with everything else that we've been painting so far, my aim with this first layer is to create a flat light gray that I'm going to be building on. I want this to be pale, so I'm using water down color. Once I have that nice pale color, I'm going to start building up some gray values. Make sure that you have a nice even sheen and once you do, add a little bit more ultramarine blue and a little bit more burnt sienna into the mix, that it close to the gray that you were just using. You can test out your color mixture on a scrap piece of watercolor paper. Looks pretty close. I'm now going in with a bit of a thicker mixture. This is, I would say more of a coffee consistency and I'm going to drop in this darker gray in darker areas that I see there in the reference. And right along the edge. I see a bit of a darker gray and along the side here. I want to work quickly because I still have to drop in my other colors for my reflections. If you want to do any lifting before dropping in your other colors, if you feel you've gone a little bit too dark, can do some lifting. Remove that gray from my painbush bristles, remove that excess water. I'm now going in with a bit of my red coffee consistency, dropping in some red. Remove that red from my pain brush bristles, remove that excess water, taking some of my undersea green plus a tiny bit of the lemon yellow, dropping it in there. Getting a little bit more undersea green, dropping it in, intensifying the green. Finally, I'm going in with some of my raw sienna plus burnt sienna. Trying to create a bit of a sense of that reflection there. I'm going to change to a bit of a smaller brush here while things are still wet. This is a size six round brush. I'm just going to clean up my edges a little bit here before allowing everything to dry. When you drop in your other colors for your reflections here, you don't want to overblend because you can end up with muddy results if you start overblending. Cleaning up my edges a little bit here. Little bit of lifting. Little bit of lifting and softening here. A little bit of lifting. I'm going to allow that to dry. I do have a little section of metal right here behind the paper. I'm going to use my size six round brush and my same color mixture over here, starting with a relatively watered down version of my gray. I'm just going to paint that in. So very small shape. I am helping myself with my absorbent towel taking a little bit more of my gray, dropping it in, just trying to create a bit of a range of values even in that very small area. Right now, this inner plane here is connecting visually with the outer planes of this tapered cylinder. I will be separating them out. 8. Tomato, Onion + Cheese First Layer: Let's move on to painting the first layer in the onion and the tomato slices. I am going to clean out a bit of a section here. You don't have to do this, but I do have to keep things as organized as possible for these tutorials that I'm filming. But if you have an extra palette area that you can create these colors in, which is clean, go ahead and use that clean section. Here's more of my cadmium red. Then for the onion, I'm going to mix together a azarin crimson and a bit of Prussian blue. The nice bright purple. Can test out your purple on a scrap piece of paper. And add more water into it so that you can see what it looks like in its most diluted state so that you can have a better understanding of that color. I will be adding a little bit of my ultramarine blue into the cadmium red for those slightly darker red values in the tomato and to develop slightly darker values in the onion, I simply add a little bit more Prussian blue into the purple mixture. I'm going to continue using my size six round brush going in with a very diluted cadmium red initially, T consistency. And I'm just going to paint the tomatoes separately, starting with a very pale cadmium red. Notice how sometimes I'm dipping my paintbrush in my container to re wet those bristles and soften the color, especially in this first layer. Once you have that first palless layer in, take more of that warm red now from the center of your puddle and we're just going to darken certain sections in that tomato. So now I'm going to add a little bit of my ultramarine blue into the red, darken it a little bit, not too much. And I'm just going to pop in a bit of a darker red value, especially in shadow areas where there would be a little bit of a shadow. If you go too dark, just add a little bit more of your red into the mixture, make it a little bit lighter and just soften the look of that red. As long as the paint is still wet, you can go in and soften. I'm going to wait just a little bit longer to paint this tomato slice because if I go in and paint that right now, this paint, which is still a little bit wet is going to bleed into that new shape or this paint is going to bleed into this shape. For this one, I don't want any bleeding. I'm going to leave that alone for just a bit. Things are dry enough. I'm going to do the same thing for the other tomato, starting with my very water down cadmium red. If there's any extra little highlight that you want to leave, you can go ahead and leave a little section unpainted as you're painting that first layer. You always have the choice to incorporate extra highlights when you're painting, even when you've already added your masking fluid. There's that first palless layer. Now I'm going to go in with thicker cadmium red. Observing that reference photo, getting clues and ideas in terms of where darker values should be. Trying to leave little sections with just the first lightest layer shining through. This is me just going in to soften some transitions. Now I'm going in with a bit of a darker red that has a little bit of ultramarine blue in it to want to make it too dark, observing where shadow shapes would be If I go too dark, I add in more of my red into the mixer, drop in a bit more of my color. I'm done. If you want to go in to do some quick lifting before allowing things to dry, you certainly can. There we go. Clean up my edges here, just a little. Cleaning up my edge. Oh I'm going to allow that to dry. The tomato is dry enough that I won't get any bleeding. I'm going to go ahead and get started with the onion, still using my size six round brush, going in with a water down version of my purple, which I created by mixing together a azarin crimson and Prussian blue, painting in the onion. I think I will be leaving extra little highlights in this shape to convey a little bit more of that texture in the onion skin. To little lighter shapes, similar little lighter shapes there. Making my way toward the right, come back and re wet. Now going in with a thicker version of my purple, dropping it in shadow areas. If you go too dark, you can always go in and lift. Once I have a nice range of purple values, I go ahead and add more of my zarin crimson into the mixture to turn it into more of a reddish purple instead of a secondary purple. I drop some of this in here and there so that I can have a variety in hue, aside from a variety in value and the onion. I'm going to do some lifting before allowing this first layer to dry. Dabbing the tip of my brush onto my absorbent towel. Cleaning up some matches. Press and lift. Press and lift. Now we're going to go ahead and paint in the first layer in the cheese. For my cheese, I'm going to be repeating the new gamboge as my base color, and then I'm going to add just a teeny tiny bit of my cadmium red for a bit of a darker version. Go to use my size six round brush, starting with the new gamboge relatively water down, observing that reference photo and noticing what the cheese shapes look like. And making my way around the lettuce. These are small complex shapes here, constantly dabbing the tip of my brush onto my absorbent towel. I'm going to do this cheese section here on the left first and then switch on to working on the other one in just a bit. Going to go in with a mix of new gamboge and just a tiny bit of cadmium red. Trop it into little shadow areas. Remove that color from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, observing what these cheese sections look like in the photo. Yes, I did change some of these shapes a bit when I was creating my preliminary sketch. Going in with my slightly darker version. Just dropping it in here and there for a slight range of yellow to orange values, yellow orange. Going in to just do a tiny bit of lifting before the strides in the sections nearest the light, clean up edges while the paint is still wet. It's easier this way. 9. Paper, Mayonnaise + Lettuce First Layer: So while that dries, let's go ahead and develop some very light gray values in the paper here around the fries. So we want the paper to look white at the end. And when we're painting white objects with watercolor, it's all about incorporating the paper as part of the piece and leaving a lot of the paper unpainted and making sure that we're going in with very water down gray in this case. Right here, I still have plenty of that gray color mixture. By this point, the ultramarine blue has separated because of its granulating properties. All I have to do is go reactivate remix, a little bit of water in my brush because I want to go in with a very light gray, I am going to make sure to add some water into this mixer. I want a T consistency, and I have my size eight round brush and my size six round brush on hand because I just want to go in and develop some very light gray values here and there. Notice how light that looks. Remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, soften the lower edge, soften the color maybe. I'm just going to be creating a few very light gray shadow shapes in this paper, painting in that shadow shape, removing that paint from my paintbrush bristles, then going in and softening the edge. I should switch on over to my size six round brush because this is a very small shape. I went in with a little bit too much water, going to re darken that. There we go. I see another light gray shape right here. Paper is folding a bit there. Then I also see a very, very light shape here along the edge where paper is folding over itself. I just created a long shape there. I'm going in to just soften with a clean and slightly damp brush and just a tiny bit more. See some shadows there. There it is. I'm just reinforcing shadow shapes here in this area a little bit more. And the paper, we're only going to be painting with one single layer. Don't want to overdo it. Overly darken that paper. Just a bit of an edge here. There it is, that's all I'm going to be doing for the paper. Let's paint the mayonnaise. Because mayonnaise is white, we're also going to be using the same gray for the mayonnaise. If you would like to warm up the gray and use a bit of a warmer looking gray in the mayonnaise, just add a little bit more burnt sienna into the mixture. We already have some masking fluid placed on the mayonnaise, protecting those lightest areas, but we are still painting something that's white. We want to go in super water down and make sure that we don't go too dark and make sure that we're leaving plenty of white paper shining through. I'm observing the reference photo I'm noticing where I have a bit of a darker area right under the bun. I'm not overthinking it. I'm just going to be creating irregular, very light gray shapes by pressing down the belly of my brush sometimes, lifting and creating irregular shadow shapes throughout that white mayonnaise. All right. Great. Doing a little bit of lifting here, and that's all I'm going to do for that. Now let's move on to working on the first layer in a lettuce. The lettuce is quite complex because we have all of these irregular shapes that are overlapping over each other. What we're going to be doing in this first layer is something similar to what we did with the fries. We're going to be painting all of the lettuce up here at once and develop a slight range of lichrene values and then we're going to tackle this section here and then finally this section here. Once that first layer dries, we'll go in and develop shadow shapes which are going to help separate out the different leaves. Don't overcomplicate this and try to recreate every single leaf exactly as it appears in the reference photo because you're going to make the process way harder and it's not really necessary in order to arrive at realistic results. I'm going to go ahead and change my water because it's pretty murky and I don't want this brownish color to affect my bright greens. I'm going to be using undersea green as my base green for the lettuce and this lemon yellow that I have here. First, we want to create those lighter green values. Make sure that you're adding plenty of your lemon yellow into your base green. I'm going to create a slightly darker version of this, which has a little bit more undersea green in it. Then as I go, I might be adding more yellow or more green into these mixers to develop somewhat of a range of light green values in this first layer. I'm going to use my size six round brush going in with a T consistency light green. Really observing my shapes and trying to avoid getting any green in the mayonnaise. Once again, my aim here is just to go in and create a light, pale green layer all throughout this first lettuce section, and then I'm going to be building darker values on that. Especially if you're using a darker green like I am, be careful not to go too dark too fast, and these are relatively small complex shapes to paint, do your best to stay on top of water control. Don't go in with too much water or too much paint and continue supporting yourself with your absorbent towel. As I am painting, I'm constantly dabbing the tip of my brush onto my absorbent towel. Once I have that initial pale green layer all throughout this first lettuce area, I go ahead and start developing some darker green areas, some shadow shapes. And for this, I make sure to bring to mind the overlapping taking place between the lettuce leaves, the little caves, the nooks, the crannies. Wherever there is a darker value, I go ahead and drop in some of my undersea green or undersea green with just a little bit of the lemon yellow once again, make sure that you don't drop in too much of the second darker green that you created because if you do, that darker green can completely expand and cover up all of your lighter green areas. We don't want to do that. You can do a little bit of lifting if you need to. Starting with the second lettuce section. With the lightest green again. Make sure to keep this first section wet. Doing a little bit of lifting here. Now going a little bit darker. Going a little bit darker in shadow areas. Doing a little bit of softening and lifting here. And last lettuce section. I think I need a little bit more lemon yellow in the mix. A Go in and do lifting whenever you need to whenever you go too dark, too fast, dip your water in your container and go over sections with just a clean and slightly damp brush. There's always a lot that you can do to remove excess color to soften color, especially when the paint is still wet. Going in with a bit of a darker green. That is it for the first layer in the lettuce. 10. Table First Layer: Let's paint the table surface. We're going to paint that brown and I will say that I brought up the edge of the table just a bit. I think it looks better there in this composition. To paint the table, we're going to be using burnt sienna as the base color, and then we're going to be adding ultramarine blue to darken it. First, I want to go in with a pretty watered down version of this bird sienna and you do want to make sure that you're going in with a relatively large brush when you're painting larger areas like this because otherwise you will make the process way harder for yourself. Load up a good amount of that water down burnt sienna. And we're going to go right in. Practice everything that we've been talking about, going back to where you started over and over. If you're more comfortable switching to a smaller brush for this middle section here, where the shape is a little bit more complex there with the lettuce and the more narrow area, go ahead and switch to a smaller brush. But I would recommend switching on back to a larger brush as quickly as possible so that you can paint this area fast. Notice how I'm wiggling the brush. It helps me paint areas faster. Wiggling. Going back to where I started, re wetting, making my way down again. I'm looking for soft effects, so I want things to stay wet for a little bit longer. Before going in with ultramarine blue, I'm adding more of my burnt sienna into the mixture, starting to develop somewhat of a range of brown values to make things less flat. Now, adding ultramarine blue into the mix or a bit of a darker brown and notice shadow areas in the reference photo. Remember how the light in this case is coming from the left, so shadows are on the right. Shadows on surfaces are very important when we're going for higher levels of realism because it helps convey that sense of mass, blocking that light from hitting that surface. Adding a bit of a shadow under both objects and then emphasizing the shadow on the right. Continuing to thicken up my dark brown and intensifying that dark brown in the shadow areas more and more. Doing a little bit of lifting here, have too much water pooling in that area. Switching on over to a smaller brush to clean things up here. I cleaning up edges. Putting a little bit more burnt sienna into the mixer. I just want a little bit of a greater range of values throughout the table in general. I think it looks a little bit too flat. Reinforcing the shadows. My paper is still wet and workable. So I continue working on this range of values on the table until I arrive at something that I like. And here I'm going to finish up by doing a little bit of lifting with a clean and only slightly damp brush to develop some lighter values in the surface of the table before allowing everything to dry. And I'm all done with that layer in the table. I'm going to allow all of this to dry completely. Everything is completely dry and before doing anything else, I'm going to just soften this edge right here. If you notice I have an obvious line here and I want to soften that. That happened because I continued working when my paper was already starting to dry. Oftentimes, it is important to allow things to dry completely and then go in after everything has dried and after the paper has regained its strength and do a little bit of gentle scrubbing to make those edges, those lines less noticeable. I'm going in with the size six round brush, and the bristles in this brush are a little bit stiffer. It helps with the scrubbing technique. I made sure to change my water. This is clean water, and I just dip my brush in my container, remove that excess water just very gently. I'm going in to do some soft scrubbing motions right along that edge. And you can see how I'm able to soften the look of that line, that edge. And I just want to make it less noticeable. That's all. All right, perfect. 11. Bread + Fries Second Layer: So let's start with layer number two and the bread. The objective with the second layer is to just push the darker mid tone and darkest dark areas. It is not to cover up the first layer that we work so hard on. It is to expand that range of values, develop darker values, and allow the first layer to shine through in lighter areas. In the second layer, we're painting wet-on-dry. So we're painting in those darker, irregular abstract shadow shapes on dry paper. If we need to soften edges, we remove that paint from our paintbrush bristle and we go in with a clean and only slightly down brush to run those bristles over the edge that we're looking to soften. Because we're looking to develop darker mid tones and darkest darks, we're going right in with the medium color and the darkest color that we were using in layer one. So when it comes to the bread, because I have developed a nice range of values already, I can go right in with the burnt sienna at this point, and then to develop even darker values than that, I am going to add ultramarine blue into the burnt sienna to create a bit of a darker brown, and then I use that darker brown in darkest dark areas. So it's all about observing the values that you've already developed in these areas. If you haven't developed the same range of values that I have, and you're still missing some mid tones, I would recommend developing those mid tones before developing the darkest darks. This is burnt sienna, coffee consistency at this point, and I'm using my size eight round brush. I'm observing the reference photo, noticing where darker shadow areas are in the bun. I'm going in to paint those shadow shapes and I'm being very loose with this process. Notice how these little shapes and marks that I'm creating, they're not very stark looking because I'm thinking of using a paint color that is a nice next gradual step from the values and hues that I've already developed underneath. Removing the paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water, if there's anything that I want to soften, I go ahead and soften it loosely, gently and not overdoing it. Continuing on with this process, creating slightly darker shapes here and there. There's a little edge here to the bun. Bersena continuing to paint in these darker shapes here and there. These are still mid tones and you still want to make sure that you're not going in and creating very stark looking lines and shapes. Continue coming back to your paint mixture on your palette and checking to see if the water, the paint ratio is helpful for the tone or value that you're trying to create. Meaning, do you need it to have more water so that the color goes down lighter? Just creating little textures. Throughout the bun. Notice how these shapes and marks that I am painting in don't look stark and distracting. That is because I'm always taking into account the value that I have underneath before painting in my shape on top. I want my transitions to be gradual. Now I can go in with a bit of a darker brown as brown has a bit of ultramarine in it. Because I'm painting wet-on-dry, things are drying pretty fast. I can just paint little shapes right over my previous ones with no issue. I don't want to go too dark because I don't want my bread to look burnt. That's it for my second layer in the top bun. Going to move on to doing the same thing in the bottom one, starting with the water down plain burnt sienna and developing little shadow shapes, little texture shapes until I arrive at a look that I like and a level of realism that I enjoy. Adding more bird sienna here. I'm going to darken this shadow shape under the lettuce. That's more of a defined shadow shape in the reference photo and I want to make sure to get that in. As you can see, I first developed the more structural, larger shadow shapes that help me convey the general form three dimensional form of what it is that I'm painting. Then I move on to adding smaller shapes, more so for texture. The smaller shapes are very subtle, very subtle. And to create more subtle shapes, it's just a matter of watering down your paint so that they're not as visible. Softening some edges here. It's not necessary to soften out all of your shapes. I want to add in some subtle textures. Going back to my burnt sienna, pretty water down and just creating subtle shapes here and there, pressing my paintbrush to my paper in different ways, creating some irregularity. At this point, I've developed a nice range of golden and brown values in the bottom and top buns. But I want to darken the right half of both the bottom and the top buns a little bit more so that I can enhance that sensation of the light source hitting these objects from the left. So what I'm doing here is I am going in with a very light burnt sienna glaze over certain sections in the right halves of the top and bottom buns and just loosely painting in abstract, irregular mid tone shapes in these areas so that I can slightly darken these halves a little bit more. I don't want to go in with a darker brown and overly darken these areas or add too much contrast. This is more of a mid tone that I'm creating. I'm making sure to leave little sections where the previous layers are shining through unpainted so that I can have those lighter value shapes hopping through here and there. I'm just looking at the burger as a whole and trying to slightly darken the right halves of these buns a little bit more with that mid tone color, which would be the burnt sienna in a relatively water down state. So this is more of a T consistency that I'm using for this glaze, and that is the difference between normal layering and a glaze. When you're using a glaze, you're strategically going in with water down paint so that the previous layers can shine through. The values and the hues that you've developed underneath are going to still show through that glaze. Just going in with a tiny bit more dark brown with the ultramarine in it and two dark shadow areas that I see in the photo. A bit more here under the lettuce. And right here under the burger, the bottom planes of the bun facing away from the light. That's it. That's all I want to do. I don't want to overly darken and make things look burnt and I don't want to completely cover up that first layer because that will flatten things out as well. For the fries, we're using similar colors to what we were using in the bun. I do want to go in with a raw sienna and bird sienna mixer first in the fries before using the bird sienna on its own, though, especially because we have work to do in this case in terms of separating out the fries. This is a mix of bird sienna and yellow ochre. Nice next step, and I'm going to use the size six round brush. I'm going to work on these individually, starting with my bird sienna plus raw sienna color combo a coffee consistency, and I'm going to work on each fry at a time. Starting with the outer planes in the ones that were able to see the outer plane, dropping in a bit of the rsiena here and there throughout this outer plane so that it looks a little bit crispier. You see the upper outer plane in this one as well. Crispier outer edge. Starting with the raw sienna and bird sienna color combo, and then I can go in and drop in more burnt sienna wherever I want to darken. Observing the reference photo for the fries. Burnt sienna while this first color is still wet. Just painting the outer more toasted part in the ones where I am able to see that. You can't see it in all of them. I left a little fry out right here. When I was drawing my sketch, I left a little fry out in this area right here. Something I decided to do. What else? Where else do I see that little outer crusty skin? This one here, and a little bit in this one. Going in with a little bit of burnt sienna. Is that it? I see a bit of an outer crust here in this one. Just observing the reference, noticing to see if I'm missing anything else. I think that's it in terms of the outer crust or skin, the toasted skin that I'm able to see in the fries that I've included here. What I'm missing now is a bit of a mid tone to separate the different planes of these fries. I'm going to use the raw sienna and bird sienna color combo, make sure that I'm not going too dark with it. I'm trying to understand the actual structure of each fry. Each fry has different planes making up that structure. Observe the reference photo and notice how some of those planes are facing toward the light. They are more illuminated and you see a lighter, more golden yellow value, and there are other planes that are facing away from the light where we see a bit of a darker value. The planes that are facing away from the light are the ones that I want to darken. I'm not really looking to darken the ones that are facing toward the light. This plane right here is the one that is facing away from the light. This one is facing toward the light. I'm only looking to darken the plane opposite to the light. If I want a bit of a value development there, a bit of a range of values, just add a little bit more burnt sienna into the mix, and drop that in. Going to do the exact same thing in all of these fries. In this one here, I don't want to go too dark. Whenever I paint in a color that is too dark, I immediately remove that color from my paintbrush bristles and I go in and soften that color. There it is. This is the plane that is facing away from the light in this particular fry. Then if I want to darken anything, I add more burnt sienna into the mix. And I darken. If your edges are way too clean, you can just do a little bit of lifting along the edge to lose that edge a little bit, but you can also do a little bit of gentle scrubbing at the end of the process once everything has dried. All right. So this plane here is the one facing away from the light. A little bit of Bert sienna in my mixer, dropping that in. And adding more raw sienna into this mixture. Which of these planes are in shadow? This already darkened and this fry back here is definitely being overlapped. Now I'm looking at what sections are in shadow due to overlapping. Where is overlapping creating shadows in some of these fries? You paint in that shadow shape, you remove that paint from your paintbrush pistles and you go in to soften the upper edge. This plane is also facing away from the light, so I want to darken it here. Going back to the shadows created by overlapping and maybe because that part of that fry is in the metal cup There's overlapping between these two fries. This is mostly raw sienna, by the way. I'm trying to create a shadow shape here, for example, in the bottom of this fry, going in with the raw sienna painting in a shadow shape, removing that paint from my paintbrush pretles, removing that excess water, and softening that upper edge. H I'm going to do this one over here, plain raw sienna because I don't want these shapes to be super dark. Painting in that shadow shape created by the overlapping, removing that paint from my paintbrush cristles, removing that excess water, and softening the upper edge. That's all I am doing for all of these. This is a little bit too sharp. I'm going to soften it, push the paint down. I'm going to finish up my fries by going in with my darkest darks, going back to my burnt sienna and ultramarine blue color combo, still using my size six round brush. All I'm looking to do at this point is paint in some small darkest shapes. And make sure that you see these shapes as abstract, irregular shadow shapes. You don't want to go in and paint lines or very solid blocky looking shapes. Then remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, and soften any little edges that I might want to soften. Not everything, not going overboard with the scrubbing, less is more when working with this medium. A bit of a dark shape in this top one. Notice how I'm mostly painting in these darkest shapes over the darkest areas that I already had previously started to create with my last layer. Almost done with the fries here. That's it. That's all I'm going to do for the fries. I'm going to allow that to dry. 12. Meat + Metal Cup Second Layer: Let's do the second layer in the meat. If you remember for the meat, we were mostly using burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, pretty heavy on the ultramarine blue because it's a very dark brown. At this point, because we're only looking to dark and darkest areas, we're going in with a pretty dark brown. Make sure that you have enough ultramarine blue in your mixer. Otherwise, you won't see the darker values that you're creating. I still want it to look like a brown and not a gray. Make sure that you do have more brown than blue in your mixer. I have both my size six and my size eight round brushes with me. First I'm going in with my larger brush and then I'm going to switch to my smaller brush for textures and smaller shadow shapes. Let's just start here. This is a pretty dark area. Size eight round brush. I'm painting in an abstract, irregular shadow shape right under the cheese. Removing that paint from my paintbrush pritles removing that excess water, softening the lower edge, perhaps pulling a little bit of that paint down. If it's too dark, add more burnt sienna into the mix, lighten it, and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing throughout the meat. Just going in and darkening shadow shapes and simultaneously to that. Using brush strokes that are helping me describe the texture a little bit more. At this point in the process, I'm both trying to darken smaller shadow areas, but I'm also looking to enhance the texture in this part of the painting. And when it comes to painting textures, it really comes down to changing the type of brush stroke that you're using. So for this specific type of texture in the meat, I'm using a combination of the scribbling technique with my brush and also the bouncing technique. When it comes to the scribbling, I am creating very small, irregular shapes, sometimes using just the tip of my brush and sometimes bringing down the belly of my brush a little bit more and doing very small, irregular loops and scribbles as I'm painting in that darker brown. And the bouncing technique is simply when you press down the bristles of your brush to different degrees, using the bristles of your brush in a stamping motion almost and shifting and changing the way that you're using your brush when it comes to the angle how much you're pressing down, whether it's just the tip or more of the bristles, Loosening up your wrist and staying away from the look of outlines or patterns, keep everything very organic, very irregular and with a lot of variety with something like this. Simultaneously, make sure that you are not completely covering up those initial layers because if you do, you'll get rid of those lighter values which are important if you're wanting to create believable textures. We're going in on dry paper. If at any point you want to soften edges or make a shape lighter that maybe is a little bit too contrasting, you can always go in with a clean and only slightly damp brush and run your bristles over that spot that you're looking to soften. Let's develop some darker values in the metal. I'm going to change my water and I'll be right back. The second layer in the metal is going to be painted wet-on-wet again. Why? Because I'm looking for soft effects in the metal. First, I'm going to prepare that gray on my palette, which is a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. You can test it out on your scrap piece of watercolor paper to make sure that it is similar to the gray that you were using before. Once you have your gray, remove that paint from your paintbrush cystles and I'm going to go in with my size 14 round brush to re wet this entire area again. Do your rewetting gently. You don't want to start scrubbing and reactivating that paint that has already dried in this area. I'm observing that reference photo and noticing which areas I need to darken more. Everything has been rewetted. I see that nice even sheen. I'm going to take some of my gray, observe the reference photo, and I'm applying more of this gray in areas that have a darker value in that reference. You can see how I am arriving at soft diffused edges because I am painting on wet paper. I want to make sure not to cover up this beautiful little section where I have those different colors because if I do, I cover up those reflections. Cleaning up edges, doing a little bit of lifting. I want to cover up these beautiful colors that I've placed on my gray in my first layer. Adding more brown and more blue into my color mixture. I want to go in pretty thick this time, more like a milk consistency. And now I am focusing on those darker mid tones and darkest dark areas throughout this metallic cup, and that is where I'm going in with this thicker gray. My paper is still wet and workable. Final lifting here. Awesome. And I'm gonna continue working on the second layer and these other elements here in the burger. I'm going to change my water before doing that. 13. Tomato, Onion, Lettuce + Cheese Second Layer: Okay. I'm going to develop some shadow shapes in the tomato slices. I'm going back to my cadmium red plus a little bit of ultramarine blue, just a teeny tiny bit, still wanted to look like a dark red. But now I'm going in with more of a coffee consistency and I'm just looking to create little shadow shapes here and there. I'm going to use my size six brush, observe the reference photo, I'm going to work on both of these tomato slices simultaneously because at this point, I'm just painting little shapes in both slices. I'm going to soften soften little edges. Putting a little bit more cadmium red into my mixture. Okay. If at any point you feel that you've lost the vibrancy, for example, tomatoes, they're very bright, very vibrant in terms of that red. So if you feel you've gone too dark and you've lost that vibrancy, you can always go in with a T consistency, base red, which is in my case cadmium red and just create a bit of a glaze to bring back that vibrancy. And a glaze is just a very translucent water down layer of your color. When you have very brightly colored areas, it's a technique that I sometimes use near the end of the process where I go in with a light glaze to liven up certain areas. Because it's a glaze, it doesn't mess up the values that you've already created because you're going in with very water down color that allows the previous layers to shine through. Back to my onion. For the onion, I was using a combination of a azarin crimson and Prussian blue. Going back to those two colors, create a mixture that looks similar to the purple that you were using before. Going to continue using my size six round brush and I'm just painting in those shadow shapes, maybe create those little lines creating more of the illusion of those little lines by just using little brush strokes. Painting in some shadows under the lettuce. That's more than enough. It's just doing some quick softening here. Great. I'm going to allow that to dry. Let's work on the lettuce now. So going back to my undersea green plus lemon yellow color combo, and at this point because my lighter values have already been created, I can go in with a bit of a darker green, so heavier on the undersea green. I'm going to continue using my size six round brush, which does come to a nice fine tip, and I'm going to zoom into this upper lettuce section in that reference photo, which again, I'm not looking to make this exactly the same as in the reference, but I would say that most of my shapes, maybe 80% of my shapes are quite similar to those in the photo. What's most important at the end of the day is to understand the shapes that you have sketched in. Understand what is overlapping, what the structure is that you're painting. You're painting shadow shapes. So these shapes are going to be created where lettuce leaves are over other leaves and blocking that light from hitting certain sections of the leaf underneath or next to it. I'm also visualizing what is upper plane of the lettuce leaf and what is bottom plane of the lettuce leaf, because the bottom planes would be darker as they are facing away from the light. And what's cool about something like this is that you can do a lot of designing on your own. You don't have to copy exactly what is present in the reference photo in order to arrive at realistic results. You do need to have this object's main characteristics in mind and allow that reference photo to remind you of this. But the shapes themselves, the irregularity present throughout, you can design on your own. So that's what I have in mind. What loops and nooks and crannies do these leaves create? I try not to spend too long in any single area or fuss too much about it because I know that at the end of the day, what matters most is having that nice range of green values to convey depth. I also know that within this context, this is going to end up looking like lettuce. We don't have to overly fuss about this. The lettuce is just part of the entire composition. Always remember that the viewer is going to see the painting as a whole. All of these elements they are going to see in combination. So within this context, it's going to be obvious that they are looking at lettuce. Just continue bringing in a large variety of irregular shapes and focusing on developing a nice range of green values from very light areas to mid tones to darker areas. Pressing down my brush to help me create regularity. That's more than enough. I don't want to overly darken things. Moving on to this middle section here. What is overlapping? What? Removing that paint from my paint fresh bristles, removing that excess water. Softening just a bit. Two. Moving down to the last lettuce section, adding more undersea green, a little bit of my lemon yellow into the mix, maybe more undersea green, scrolling down to the section in the reference and creating some shadow shapes. Remember to stay away from lines solid looking shapes. Awesome. Okay. I'm going to do a tiny bit of scrubbing with the same brush just to soften some edges. Y this might already be a good enough range of values for the lettuce. I do want to see what this looks like once it has dried because watercolor does tend to dry lighter than how it looks when it's wet. Tiny bit of a definition there. I'm going to allow that to dry. Now I'm going in with almost plain undersea green and I'm just developing my darkest shadow shapes which are teeny, tiny, keep them abstract. Okay. Observing that reference photo, noticing where darker shadow shapes make sense. Removing paint from my paint brush bristles, removing that excess water, softening any little edges that I might need to soften. Back to my undersea green, a milk consistency at this point. It's pretty thick. Okay. So let's move on to developing the second layer in the cheese. For the cheese, I was using Mu gamboge and a tiny bit of cadmium red Mugamboge. Cadmium red tiny bit. You can test it out using my size six round brush. You want to make sure that this darker color isn't too red. It's still within that reddish orange range that makes sense. You're always again, thinking of that next gradual color, next gradual tone when you're developing those shadows. I'm painting in that abstract shadow shape, especially under the lettuce. And then I remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles and I go in to soften, especially the lower edge. And that is enough for the cheese. I'm going to quickly reactivate my gray that I have on my palette, my burnt sienna plus ultra green, blue color combo and I'm just going to develop a tiny bit of a darker gray value in the mayonnaise here and there. Little teeny tiny shadow shapes. That's enough. Ms soften. There's one more thing that I want to do before removing the masking fluid and painting the background wall, and it is to reinforce the shadows on the surface of the table. 14. Table Cast Shadows : Okay. So depending on how light or how dark your table is right now, and how much you're able to see those important cast shadows created by this metal cup and the fries and the burger on the surface of the table. This next step might or might not be something that you have to do. It all depends on how your process is going and how your painting is looking. For me, as the table and the shadows have dried, all of this has lightened quite a bit. And so I am still going to be working on a couple more layers in my table area. So the first thing that I did was I sketched in those main shadow shapes on my table once again using my pencil. And then using my size six round brush and my Burt Siena plus ultramarine blue color combo to create a pretty dark brown, I go in and paint these shadow shapes wet-on-dry. I'm going to make these pretty dark because later on, I'm going to be applying another wash over the entire table shape, which is going to help me create a bit of a mid tone. So even though these shapes are going to look pretty dark right now, as I am painting them over a relatively light brown background, they are not going to look this contrasting at the end. My objective here is to make sure that these main items are creating visible cast shadow shapes on the surface of the table so that I can arrive at the level of realism that I'm after because shadows play such a huge role in communicating that mass, blocking the light from hitting the surface under these items. I continue working on the shapes of these cast shadows until they look right to me. And even though I am going in with a darker brown initially, I'm trying to keep it more water down and lighter, and I'm gradually making my way toward a darker, deeper brown. So, in other words, first I went in with more of a coffee consistency, and once I like my shapes, I then go in with a thicker version of this burnt sienna and ultramarine blue mixture, more of a milk consistency or even cream. I create a very, very thin or narrow shadow shape right under these items in front of the items and connect this very narrow shadow shape with the larger shadow shape on the right opposite to the light source. And I do this using just the tip of my brush. Alright, I'm almost done here, just doing some final darkening and refining of these shadow shapes. And then I'm going to allow this to dry and see how these look later. Later on, depending on how things are looking, I might decide to do some gentle scrubbing along the edges of these shapes to soften them before working on that final brown wash all throughout the table. 15. Removing Masking Fluid + Painting Background: Let's go ahead and remove the masking fluid now. I like using my hands. I make sure that my hands are clean before doing it. But if you want to use a rubber cement pickup or even a soft graphite eraser, just make sure that the eraser is clean. If you're going to be using it on your painting, you can go ahead and do that. I wouldn't recommend using your hands if you have sensitive skin because you can get blisters on your hands if you're not careful from the rubbing. Those are the sesame seeds uncovered and I have a little bit of masking fluid in the mayonnaise. There it is. There are my highlights the mayonnaise and little shapes here and there in the lettuce. I want to make sure to uncover in the onion in the tomato, making my way down. There it is a little bit more here. I can feel it. I think all my masking fluid has been removed from the hamburger. Remove the masking fluid from the metal. This next part of the process is completely optional. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. If you want to leave your background completely white, it's up to you. I want to add a little bit of color to my background, a little bit of an expressive touch. My same gray that I've been using all along, which is my ultramarine blue and Bird sienna color combo is going to be my base main color for the background, but I have also prepared a bit of new gamboge and raw sienna right here, which I'm going to be creating blooms with. You can also decide to paint your background with a light gray and not bring in any extra pops of color. I'm using a large size six mop brush and clean water and bringing out a little bit of water at a time from my container, I am gently smoothing this water onto the entire background wall section. Take your time with this process. I cannot stress this enough. If you rush through it or just go across once or downward once, whatever direction it is that you're working toward, that initial area that you started in is going to be dry by the time you make your way across. If you are right handed, like I am and you're starting on the left, make your way toward the right a little bit, then come back to where you started and re wet, then make your way across a little bit more and come back to where you started and on and on and on until you reach the opposite edge, and then I would recommend going over everything gently again a couple of times. Do not exert too much pressure. You don't want to start damaging your paper or the sizing of your paper. Be very gentle, but insist everywhere until you see a nice even sheen. Don't start painting in your color until you see that nice even sheen all throughout your background wool. And if you would like to switch to a smaller brush in that middle section where you have a more complex area, you can certainly change to a smaller brush, make sure that you have your larger brush on hand so that you can switch between them. Quickly and continue rewetting that entire general portion of the background. You don't want to spend too long trying to perfectly wet those little teeny tiny areas. It's preferable to focus on the macro general area of your background here and wetting that entire general area effectively. Then after you have done some work painting your background, you can switch to a smaller brush again and clean up edges if you have to. Do you have in mind that the environment that you're working in, whether you live in a humid environment, a dry environment, a cold a super warm environment. If you have a fan, a heating system on, anything like that can definitely affect how quickly or how slowly your paper and your paint start drying on you throughout the process. When I am painting large areas like this, I always make sure to turn off any fans, any air conditioning, anything like that because it makes the process way more frustrating. Just as an FYI, I live in a very warm, oftentimes very dry environment and I find this pre wedding process absolutely instrumental. In allowing me to develop beautiful wet-on-wet effects in large areas. This is a technique that I often bring into the painting process, especially for large areas, and it is very, very important to learn to pre wet effectively. It takes time and practice. Once I arrived at that nice even chin all throughout my background, I made sure to have my larger size six mop brush on hand again. I loaded up a good amount of this gray, and it was time to start painting in my color. I wanted to start with a light gray and then build on that light gray layer by thickening up my gray color mixture and then dropping in more gray in certain areas so that I could arrive at a nice range of values in my background. I'm not really going for a flat light gray background, though there is nothing wrong with that. If you're looking for a flat gray value, that's fine, too. But I am looking for certain sections to look a little bit darker, other sections to look a little bit lighter. You're going to see me just continue developing that range of light and darker gray values throughout my background until I arrive at something that I like, and I don't start dropping in my other colors until I finish with my gray. Switching to my size 14 brown brush and pushing the paint into the edges just a little bit closer with more control using the smaller brush. If you have any puddles, remove that excess water and paint with the clean and only slightly damp bristles of your brush and use those as a little absorbent sponge. I want to make sure that I have some irregularity along the top edge of the top bun because the sesame seeds are right over that edge. So I have that in mind when I'm doing my cleaning up of edges with the smaller brush. If you want to darken your background wall more, you can drop in more of your gray. As long as everything is still wet and workable, you can intensify the gray if you'd like, or create more of a range of values in the background as opposed to a flat gray all throughout. Create some lighter areas, some darker areas. I'm going to go quiet as I continue working on my background. Sometimes you're going to see me remove some paint to reveal more of that bright paper to create lighter value areas, and other times you're going to see me intensify and darken areas by dropping in more color. So sometimes I add, sometimes I subtract. Alright, think I like how that looks. I'm going to leave that alone. And I'm going to go in with some of this new gamboge plus raw sienna mixture that I have on my palette, dropping it in in a very loose, irregular way, making sure that I'm not creating any patterns or anything like that. This step is completely optional. If you would rather keep your background just gray, that's totally fine, as well. I like adding in sometimes an extra pop of color and also repeating colors throughout the piece leads to greater color harmony and a more cohesive look at the end. So this is just an artistic choice that I made. And finally, popping in some plain raw sienna just for a bit of a darker look here and there, just to expand that variety and hues in my background. All right. Doing a little bit of lifting here. Call my background done, and that is it for my background. 16. Softening Highlight Shapes + Painting Sesame Seeds: I'm going to go back to this slightly stiffer bristle brush that I was using for my scrubbing before. And I'm just going to gently soften the edges of my masking fluid shapes here just a little bit. Another thing that I do to soften the look of these bright highlight shapes is I use my size eight round brush and a very water down gray to just fill in certain sections of these bright white shapes. I'm not going in and filling the entirety of these shapes with gray because I want to keep those bright highlights in certain areas. I'm just looking to make them a little bit smaller, a little bit softer. So those right there are those two techniques that I use to soften highlights left by masking fluid in action. The first one is softening edges with a clean and slightly damp brush, maybe activating a little bit of that dry paint and pulling a little bit into those highlight shapes. And the other technique is simply to go in with a very water down color and just fill in certain sections and make those sections a very light value as opposed to a bright white. Using my size zero round brush, I'm going to take a T consistency gray from my palette, and I'm going to develop a little bit more realism in these sesame seeds by just painting in a narrow kind of crescent moon shape along the bottom edge of some of these shapes that right now are just plain white. Sesame seeds have a roundness to them. And by creating this crescent moon shadow shape along the lower edge, you're going to create more of a rounded three dimensional look in these seeds. Not to mention, some of these seeds are clustering together or overlapping over each other, creating shadows on the sesame seeds underneath. And so I want to create that sense of overlapping of depth of three diness. And all you have to do is create a few light gray shapes here and there, thinking of that three diness and that overlapping taking place. Avoid going in and just filling in these white shapes with gray because you're going to end up with gray looking shapes. Make sure that you're keeping a teeny, tiny bit of white paper alone shining through completely unpainted so that these seeds can look white at the end. And the other thing that I do to add more realism to this part of the burger is I add a teeny, tiny cast shadow shape outside of the sesame seed. So we created shadows inside of the sesame seed to provide them their sense of roundness and those curves to that structure. But those teeny, tiny structures are creating a shadow on the bun itself. So what I'm doing here is I'm using my size zero round brush and now painting a very narrow crescent moon shape outside of these sesame seeds, at least some of them. I'm using a lighter brown, which I created by mixing together burnt sienna and raw sienna so that these shadow shapes are not super contrasting on the bun, because these are very, very small structures. The smaller the structure, the smaller the shadow shape it creates. But you'll notice that by adding this cast shadow shape in alongside that edge, that really makes those seeds pop. And if you're asking yourself, well, where should I add the cast shadow shape? Always come back to asking yourself, where is the light source in relation to these objects? It's on the upper left. So try adding the case shadow along the right edge of these seeds. You don't have to add a cache shadow under every single sesame seed. Less is more. Once I'm done with the seeds, the last thing that I do before moving on to the next part of this process is I soften the edges of those very dark shapes that I created for my cast shadows on the surface of the table. Now that these shapes are completely dry, I can go in with a little bit more control and do some gentle scrubbing along the edges to just soften certain parts. I'm using my size eight round brush, and it is clean and only slightly damp. And I definitely don't want to go overboard with the scrubbing because it is a rougher technique that can damage your paper if you're not careful. I also don't want to overly lighten or soften this dark shape because I need it visible through the brown wash that I'm going to be painting over this entire area later. 17. Metal Cup Third Layer + Table Second Layer: It is time to push those darkest darks in that metal cup. So I'm using my size 14 round brush and my gray color mixture created with burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. And I'm going in with a relatively thick mixture right off the bat. This would be more of a milk consistency. And I'm observing that reference photo and noticing which areas I need to push and darken more. Trying to paint in this abstract shadow shape in a location and in a shape that is similar to that in the photo. And because I'm painting this wet-on-dry, I'm being left with sharp defined edges around these shapes that I am painting in. So once I paint in that shape, I remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles and I go in with a clean and only slightly damp brush, run my paintbrush bristles along the edges that I'm looking to soften, and continue working in this way until I arrive at that range of values that I need for realism. If you find that you're losing control, one tip that I can provide is work on a section at a time and allow that to dry completely before working on the next. Because once a large section of your paper becomes damp, that paint can expand too much and cover up your lighter values. And that is going to lead to flat heavy results. Have in mind that when working with watercolor, oftentimes you don't have to go as dark as you might think to arrive at higher levels of realism, continuing to soften edges whenever I feel I need to and making sure that I'm leaving plenty of those layers underneath uncovered, because, again, we need those lighter values, and we also don't want to cover up that section on the right, where we have those other colors that are being reflected on this material. You only want to layer and darken over sections that you need to push the contrast in. As you continue making your way towards the very darkest darks, you can add in more of your two colors into your mixture to thicken it up even more. Continue comparing your painting with the reference photo and noticing if those value relationships that you see throughout the metallic cup are similar. Here I'm separating the outer planes of the cup from the inner planes of the cup that we can see in that upper right section, and all I did there was darken the outer planes a little bit more. That difference in values between outer planes in that section and inner planes, which I kept lighter visually separates these sections so that we can better understand what we're looking. Also create some abstract gray mid tone shapes in between these bright highlight shapes, really trying to stay away from the look of outlines or very solid blocky shapes, keeping everything very irregular and softening as necessary with a clean and slightly damp brush. And I make that bright highlight along the upper edge a little bit smaller by painting in some gray in there as well. And finally, it is time to paint in that last brown wash in the table area. This is going to help darken the table, make that brown richer, and also act as a mid tone so that our shadow shapes can be less contrasting and distracting. So what I'm doing here is I'm using my size six mop brush, and I'm very gently pre wetting over this entire table area. I tried my best not to reactivate the shadow shapes that I had painted before, but I do, especially that shadow shape in the middle really lightened quite a bit. So all that means is that I'm going to have to darken that shadow shape again, but I'm going to be doing it wet-on-wet this time right over my initial brown color that I lay down. Once I see that nice even sheen all throughout the table area, I switch on over to my size 14 round brush again and create more of my brown color mixture. This is a nice, I would say, medium brown that I have created by mixing together burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. I was looking for a nice chocolatey brown, darker than what I already have there, but not as dark as the cast shadow colors so that I could still paint those in and make them darker than the rest of the table. Make sure that you're going in at least with a coffee consistency or even a milk consistency because you have done pre wedding. So there's already water on that paper, which is going to dilute that color even more. With that chocolatey brown painted in all throughout the table, I add in more ultramarine blue into my brown color mixture to darken it even more so that I can use more of a brownish gray color for those cast shadows. And I paint in those cast shadow shapes one last time wet-on-wet this time, which helped me arrive at that nice soft look in those shadow shapes. And finally, for some very last refinements, I'm going in with my size eight scrubber brush and doing some very gentle scrubbing in some sections that I want to lighten a little bit more just here and there. At this point, I'm seeing the piece as a whole and noticing if there are any shapes or marks that look a little bit too stark to me. If there are, I just go in with some very gentle scrubbing. I'm not really trying to erase or correct any mistakes fully. I'm just trying to soften things a little bit more wherever I feel I need to. Less is more with the scrubbing. Remember that this is an abrasive, kind of rough technique, and you don't want to go overboard because you can start damaging your paper. I make sure to rinse out my paintbrush bristles when I switch from working on one area to the next so that I don't muddy up or contaminate my next area. It's important to acknowledge that how much you're able to reactivate your paint colors after they have dried, how much you're able to lift off paint from your paper after you've applied it is going to depend on the staining qualities of the specific paint colors that you have used, and also simply the paper that you've used. If you're using paint colors that have high staining qualities, you're not going to be able to reactivate and lift much at all. But if you're using paint colors with low staining qualities, you will be able to reactivate quite a bit and remove some of it. But you're never going to be able to go back to the whiteness and the brightness that the paper once had after you've applied paint on it, which is why it's so important to protect our highlights, to account for lighter value areas that we want to create and to always work from lights to darks when we're working with watercolor. And with that, we're all done with this watercolor food illustration piece. 18. Thank You! : You made it to this point, congratulations. I really hope that you enjoyed this course and that you learned many new things that you can take with you to future watercolor paintings. Don't forget to share your work in the Projects and Resources tab. It always makes me so happy to see what you've created. I'm also always happy to help if you have any questions, struggles or need my input on anything. Feel free to reach out and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. And finally, make sure to follow me here on Skillshare because I have many new courses coming down the pipeline for and make sure that you check out all of the free resources that I'm making available over on my YouTube channel, my Instagram, and also my website because every single week, I share new videos and posts to help you continue learning and growing as artists, and that will also help you stay inspired as you move forward. Thank you so very much for joining me in this course. I wish you a wonderful rest of your day. Enjoy your art practice and see you very very soon.