Watercolor Fruits & Vegetables: Learn to Paint 10 Simple, Easy Food Illustrations!

1. Welcome to class!: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for this class that is going to be all about how to paint some common fruits and vegetables using watercolor. I'll take you step-by-step through the process of painting 10 different fruits and veggies but the techniques you'll learn inside this class can be applied to any other foods you want to paint. If your favorite snack isn't on today's list. there's no need to worry. We'll start by going over all the supplies you'll need, and we'll talk about how to make each of the fruits and vegetables look realistic and pop off the page using the wet on wet watercolor technique and utilizing shadows and highlights. For your class project, you can choose to create an original piece of artwork to hang on your kitchen walls using the skills you'll learn inside this class. Keep it simple with a single painting or jazz it up a bit with some text and digital design upgrades. The final piece is up to you and your creativity. Finally, if you haven't taken one of my classes before yet, my name is Priya, from Petals by Priya Watercolor Designs, and I'm a watercolor artist, surface pattern designer, paper goods shop owner, and online art teacher based in Honolulu, Hawaii. But most importantly, I'm just so thrilled and grateful to be painting alongside you today. If you'd like to learn more, you can find my work on Instagram at petals_by_priya, or online at my website, petalsbypriya.com. Now that we've covered all the basics of the class, let's grab our supplies and jump right in. 2. Supplies: Let's start by going over the supplies you'll need for this class. Starting with watercolor paper, I will be using Legion Stonehenge, 100 percent cotton paper. Moving onto watercolor brushes, you can really use any type of brush you're comfortable with, but I will primarily be using round brushes ranging from size 2-10. Most importantly, let's get to the watercolor paints. Since we're going to be painting a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, we'll need quite a few different colors. I'll go more in depth in each video as we go along, but overall I'll be using these two colors sheets from the viva colors, and I'll leave a link to them in the class description. Finally, some of the other supplies we'll need for this class include a pencil and eraser for light sketching, a jar of clean water, a mixing palette, paper towel, and a black felt-tip pen or Sharpie. Once you're ready to go, I'll see you in the next video to start painting some lemons. 3. Lemons: We're going to start by painting a loose style lemon. You can see here I have a reference sheet that I created as I was practicing the fruits and veggies we'll be painting today. You'll probably notice me referencing this sheet and other examples throughout the class. Let's start by talking about which colors we'll need to paint this lemon. First, of course, we will need a shade of yellow for the base layer of the lemon. Then either a darker yellow or light orange to add the shadows here around the edges. Finally, we'll need some shades of green for the leaves up here at the top. Now, you can choose to paint with bright vibrant colors or tone it down with a more muted color palette. Before we start painting, I'm going to start with a light sketch to get a feel for the shape of the lemon. I'm going to start with an oval sketch that has small curved tips at the top and bottom, like you can see here in the reference painting. Then I'll add a small stem on top with a couple of leaves coming down. Go ahead and sketch out your lemon. Don't worry if it takes you a few tries. Also, if you have any trouble sketching out any of the foods during this class, you can check out the free downloadable PDF I provided in the resources section that has reference sketches for each of them. That will help you out if you need it while you're preparing your drawings. Once you're happy with your sketch, we'll start painting. Now keep in mind, we will be using the wet on wet watercolor technique throughout the class. We'll need to work fast and add layers while the previous layers are still wet. Let's grab our lightest yellow and we're just going to fill in the entire lemon with a light wash of that yellow. Make sure you have enough water on your brush so that you don't run out while you're filling it in. As I said, we will be using wet on wet. We want to make sure that this first layer stays nice and wet before we start adding more to it. Now while that first layer is still wet, we're going to add some depth and dimension to the lemon by adding some shadows. Go ahead and grab either your darker yellow or even a light orange, and just tap in some of that color around the edge of the lemon. If your first layer has dried, you can just go over it with a clean damp brush because we want to make sure we can get these nice bleeds. I'm just tapping it in here. If you need to smooth out any harsh edges like these here, just rinse off your brush, gently tap it on your paper towel to remove excess water, and softly feather out the paint along the edges like this. It may take a few rounds of smoothing to get a nice even blend. I'm going to add even more of the dark orange here and just make it a little more dramatic. What I also like to do after adding some of the shadows is lifting away some color on the opposite side to give it a nice highlight. All you have to do to lift is rinse off your brush, dab it on your paper towel, and then gently lift some of that color up. I'm going to do that process one more time and this is just to add that highlight there. Rinsing off my brush, dabbing it and lifting some color. Once you're happy with how all the shadows and the highlight look with your lemon, let's go ahead and add the leaves. I'm using a slightly smaller round brush. I'll be using size 4 and I'm gently filling up my paintbrush with the color. I'm going to do a small stem here off the top and then I have two leaves, one that's coming more sideways like this, it's going to fill that in, and then one coming down. One thing you'll want to keep in mind is that if you have a leaf like this that's touching with the lemon, if you don't want to have crazy bleeds between the two, just make sure your lemon layer has dried before adding the leaf. Now before this first layer of the leaf dries, I also want to tap in some darker green around the edges, like what we did with the lemon, just to give it a little more drama and contrast. I also want to mention, if you want to learn more about painting watercolor leaves in the loose style like I did here with the lemon, I have another comprehensive class all about the ins and outs of painting leaves in the loose style. Definitely check that one out if that interests you. That's about it for the lemon. I hope you enjoyed that. Feel free to keep practicing some more lemons or meet me in the next video to paint some lines. 4. Limes: Moving on to limes, this process is very similar to the lemons we just learned how to paint. If you're comfortable with those you'll fly through this one in no time. For the color, as you can assume, we'll need some shades of green for the lime and the leaves and a bit of brown to add the small stem on top. Go ahead and figure out which shades of green you'd like to use then we'll start sketching. The sketch is going to be pretty similar to the lemon but limes are a bit more round. Make sure to keep that in mind as you sketch out your lime. When your sketch is done let's follow the same process as we did for the lemons starting with a light wash of green let's fill in the outline. Again, you want to make sure you have enough moisture in your brush so that this first layer stays nice and wet and then while the first layer is still wet we'll do the same thing where we just tap in some darker green around the edges for the shadows. Just gently tap it in here around the edges and the top and bottom. You can see I have a bit of pooling going on here which just means there's a little too much water on my paper and that makes it harder to blend the colors nicely. This is one thing you want to keep in mind when you work with wet on wet watercolors, is to keep that fine balance between having just enough but not too much water as you start your second layer. Once you've gone through and blended the colors a bit, I'm just going to add another highlight like we did with the lemon by lifting some color off the page. Again, to do that, I just rinse off my brush, dab it on the paper towel and then just lift that color where I want there to be a little bit of the highlight. Now I'm going to add a little brown stem here up at the top. Again, if you don't want there to be big bleeds between the colors just make sure your lime is dry before you add the stem and the leaves. I'm just using a little bit of brown and then you can either leave it like that or you can add a leaf like we did here with the lemon so I'm just going to go in and do one last wave with a really dark shade of green. There you have it. I told you that one would be a pretty easy, very similar to the lemon that we just did previously. Next up, we'll continue the suggest theme to paint some oranges but we're going to take a little bit of a different approach for this one. See you there. 5. Orange Slices: For the oranges, I'm actually going to show you how to paint a slice or a wedge of orange. However, if you want to paint the full outside of the orange instead, it's going to be basically the same process as we did for the previous two lessons, but again, you want to make sure that the shape is more rounded. That's for the colors will need for this lesson, we will need orange and yellow so that we can get this nice blend of color here. To get started with the orange slice, let's look at my reference paintings here. You can see we have a C curve here on the left, and then four rounded triangles that meet up towards the middle that makes up the inside of the slice. Let's start sketching those pieces and then we'll fill them in with the color. Once your sketch is done, we'll start by painting the C curve. I'm loading up my brush with quite a bit of the lighter orange. It's almost more yellowy orange. I'm just going to fill in the C curve. While that's still wet, I'm going to grab a little bit of the darker orange and just tap in some shadows. It doesn't have to be anything too dramatic. Just tapping it in. Now, each of the wedges is going to do the exact same thing so we'll have the same process for all four wedges. I'm going to start with a light base layer of the lighter orange, almost yellowy orange and then I'll tap in some darker orange down at the bottom and around the sides to give it some more drama. Again, starting with the lighter orange, almost yellowy orange, I'm just going to fill this in. Then while it's still wet, I'll just tap in the darker orange down here at the bottom and up the sides. Using that same technique we did for the lemons and limes, I'll just feather it out to make the blend a little more even. Now, I'm going to repeat this process through the next three wedges. All four have this nice at blended ombre effect and then we'll go back in and add some seeds and some darker marks once those are dry. One more reminder when using the wet on wet technique like we've been practicing all along, you want to keep a good balance of moisture on your page between the first and second layers. If your first layer has dried, simply take a clean damp brush and reactivate that layer. On the other hand, if there's too much water and you experienced pooling, just soak up some of that excess water with a clean dry brush, then proceed with the next layer. It takes a bit of practice, but the more you experiment with this technique, the more naturally it will come to you. Once you're done with all four wedges so you can leave it as is if you're happy with how that looks, or you can go back in and add a couple of last minute touches. I'm taking a very small brush, this is size 1, and I'm taking a dark orange and I'm just going to add in some marks along each of the wedges. Just some skinny little marks to give it some more interest. Make sure you're not doing it in a perfect line. You don't want it to look symmetrical, just want it to look natural. I'm just going to go through and do that to each of the four wedges. There you have it for the orange slice. I'll see you in the next video to start painting some watermelon. 6. Watermelons: Now onto watermelons. In this lesson, we'll be painting a nice thick slice of watermelon with some seeds in it. That's what we'll need the black felt-tip pen or Sharpie for at the end is to add in those seeds. In terms of color, we'll need some shades of red or dark pink for the main section of the watermelon, the black pen for the seeds, and then a light vibrant green for the watermelon rind. Looking at my example painting here, you will notice that our painting is going to be a 3D view or a cross-section of a watermelon slice. The important part you'll want to keep in mind while you're painting is to leave this nice thin whitespace between these two parts to show the change in perspective from the top of the watermelon here to the side. Just another reminder to be sure to download the sketching reference sheet I provided if you need any help at all with the drawing portion of it. We are all set to go. One thing I want to mention before we start painting is that we're going to be painting this in three different sections. Now we have the top triangle here, the top part of the watermelon. We have the side and then we have the rind. You want to make sure you have all three of those parts defined in your sketch that way we can work in sections. If we did it all at once, it would all bleed into each other and just create a blob of color, which we definitely don't want that to happen. I'm going to start with this main section here, do a light wash just like we have in the other lessons, light wash of dark pink. Then for the shadows, I'm going to tap in some darker pink along the edge here and then I'm also going to create just a few organic blooms. Just dropping in color wherever to just make it look fun and expressive. Let's get started with that. A few other tips for this watermelon. Number 1, make sure the edge of your slice has a slight curve to it. You don't want to have your sketch be a complete triangle with sharp edges, because in reality, when you cut up a slice of watermelon, it will have a rounded edge where the rind is. Also, I would just want to remind you that while working with the wet on wet technique, time is definitely of the essence so that you can have those nice bleeds of color as you add the second layer. But as I've mentioned before, you can always go back over the first layer with a small amount of clean water to reactivate it if yours has dried out before you've started with that second layer. Now the base layer is done. Like I mentioned, I'm going to be tapping in some shadows along the edge and around the top near the rind and then also just drop in some organic blooms throughout. You'll notice a consistent theme here throughout the class where we start with the base layer, then tap in the darker shadows around the edges like we're doing now and what we've done with all the prior lessons. This is a great technique to practice because you can apply it to any other food or other subjects you paint when you want to add more depth and give your painting a 3D effect. While I might sound like a broken record in each of these lessons, the skill itself is a really useful technique to have in your painting tool belt. Now you want to make sure that that first section is completely dry before we move on to the next. The next is going to be this side piece right here. If this was still wet and any part of it touched the side piece, they would just blob into one. Let's look at our reference again. We have this top section that we just finished painting and now we're going to work on the side. As I mentioned before we started, this whitespace here in between it's going to be really critical in order to show the change in reference from the top to the side of the watermelon. If we didn't have this whitespace here, it would just be one flat triangle, one flat watermelon, and you wouldn't get this depth and dimension here. Keep that in mind as we start the next section here is to leave a little bit of whitespace in between. We're going to do the same process as we did for this. Top section, start with a light wash of the pink and then drop in some shadows here at the bottom. You can choose how thick or thin you want this section to be. If you're more into the thin slices, you can certainly keep the side piece nice and dainty, maybe just one brush/wide. Or if you want a thick juicy piece, you can make it a bit wider like I'm doing with mine. I really want you to have creative freedom in each of these projects. Add your own personal touches and just have fun painting. Now, once you're done with these first two sections and both have dried, we'll get started with the third portion, which is the watermelon rind. I'm going to use a very vibrant green here and I'm going to start with a very light wash. It's almost yellowy green. Fill in that base layer and then while it's still wet, drop in some of the dark value of green along the edge and right alongside this edge to show the change in perspective from the top to the side. Let's get started dropping in that color. When you're working on the rind, make sure your first layer is very light. To achieve a more translucent green, just rinse some of the pigment off your brush before putting it down on the paper. True watermelon slices have a very slight gradient from the pink fruit, the green rind. You want to avoid making too harsh of a transition. This also helps the dark blooms look more dramatic and provides more contrast when you drop those in next. Once you're done with the rind, we can start adding in the seeds. As I mentioned before, we'll want to make sure that this is completely dry before we start adding the seeds. I will be using this fine tip Sharpie. You can use either a Sharpie or a felt tip pen to add in the seeds here. If any of this was still wet, it could damage your pen. That's why I just want to reiterate. You want to make sure this is dry before you start adding any seeds. Now, looking at the reference here, here's what some of the seeds can look like. They're just teardrop shape and they're facing all different ways. You can see you just half of the seed here. One is facing completely sideways, so feel free to just place them where you want. Don't make them too symmetrical or in a line, because that's not how it looks in a real watermelon. Let's go ahead and add some in, and then we'll finish up this lesson. I'm going to start by just outlining each of the seeds with the fine tip Sharpie. Then once I'm done outlining, I will go back through and fill them all in. Just a reminder, it's totally up to you where you want to place each of the seeds. Just have fun with it. Place them wherever you think they would be in a real slice of watermelon. I think I'm all done with my seeds. I hope you are too. If you want to go the extra step, you can see here on my reference that I have some of them with some white accents there to show a little bit of highlight or light reflecting off of the seeds and I just used a tiny bit of white paint to create that. You can do that if you'd like, or if you're happy with how it is, just with the black seeds, then we're good to go to the next video. 7. Bananas: Bananas might not be the prettiest fruit to paint, but they're actually really fun to do. You can get really loose and expressive by adding in some bruises to the banana using the wet on wet technique. In this lesson we'll be painting both bruised loosed style banana and also the more traditional style like this. Let's start by sketching out to different bananas. First step is going to be the bruised banana. Once I'm done with the sketches, I'm going to take a light wash of yellow. I'm actually using the same yellow that I used for the lemon in the first video. I'll just put down my base layer. Now keep in mind this first bruised banana is going to be a super loose, more whimsical style. Don't overthink it. Just have fun filling in the color and dropping in those bruises. The second banana will be more traditional and will require more blending technique, but we'll get to that after. While that base layer is still wet, I'm just going to grab a light brown and just tap in some bruises so you get those nice organic blooms when you use the wet on wet technique. Just feel free to drop it in wherever you like. You can have a super bruised banana or you can have a pretty fresh one, it's up to you. That's about it for this version, it's very fun and simple. Next we'll do the more traditional looking banana. For the second method of banana, I'm going to start with another very light wash of the yellow and fill in the whole banana. While this first layer is still wet. I'm going to grab a darker value of that same yellow and just add in a little bit of shadows around the edges. Just like we've done with all the lessons so far, I'm just going to feather this out to make the blends a little softer. Now I'm going to add just a very light touch of green up at the top. This banana is going to be a little bit less ripe than the other one. If your green is a little too intense, just rinse off some of that pigment so it's almost like a translucent green. Once you're done adding a little bit of green, I'm going to finish off with a little bit of brown for the top on the bottom. The green and yellow is still a little bit wet, so it's going to bleed into each other a little bit, which I actually like for this. I'm just gently adding in some light brown. Then I'll go back in with a little bit of darker brown. I'm going to do a little here at the bottom too. Now I'm going in with just a little bit darker of a brown to add some shadows. I think that's about good. Up next we're going to be painting a bright, beautiful beat. This is my favorite one of the class, so I'll see you there. 8. Beets: In this next section, we'll be painting a big beautiful beat. This is one of my all-time favorites to paint mainly because this color is just so vibrant and eye-catching. The specific color I'll be using for this is called Burgundy from the spring set of the viviva color sheets. Now starting out with the sketch, I'm going to draw first this round part of the beat and then I'm going to add a wiggly little root towards the bottom and then I'll lightly sketch out where I want the leaves and the veins to go up at the top. Once I have my sketch down, I'm going to do what we've done in the other lessons and start with a base layer of that burgundy color. Well, this first layer is still wet, I'll be adding in some shadows here on one side. I'm just getting a darker value of that burgundy color. I'm also going to lift some color here so you get a nice highlight. You can see by lifting color, adding highlights and shadows, it really just makes all of these items look more 3D, more realistic. Because if I didn't add these things, it would just look a little bit flat. I'm just going to continue adding in some shadows and lifting color and then we'll move on to the next part. Well, this first layer is still drying, I'm going to go in and add the little root. I'm just using a darker value of that Burgundy, making a little tail off the bottom. Now we're going to start working on the leaves of the beat. As you can see in my reference painting on the screen, the Burgundy color extends up through the beat and into the leaves, which are more wavy than the other leaves we've painted in the class so far. And they have lots of veins running through them as well. I'm going to start with that Burgundy part. I included this reference photo on the top left of some beet leaves so you can see how those veins are really integrated into the leaves. Okay, and once you're done with that part, we can start adding in the green part of the leaves. You can check out my outline reference if you'd like, but these leaves just have a wavy edge and then come to a pointy tip. I'm going to do a light wash of green and just work my way around those red lines because I don't want to cover them up completely. Well, this first layer is still wet, I'm going to go back in and just drop in some darker green. Feel free to add the shadows wherever you like. I usually tend to go for the outside edge of each of the leaves and then some on the inside as well. I'm going to do the same process with the second little leaf up here. I'll add in some shadows just like we did with the first one, and then we'll be very close to finishing. But the last step will just be adding in some veins to these leaves. The last step is adding in a few more veins to both of the leaves. I'm going to add those, then we'll be all done. 9. Blueberries: Moving on to another favorite of mine and also one of the easiest ones in this class, the blueberries. There are a ton of different ways to paint berries, but for this lesson, we'll stick to the wet-on-wet, loose style theme that we've been practicing throughout the class. Here you can see what the berries will look like from my reference painting. We're going to be painting quite a few of them here today so you can get a good feel for adding shadows and painting them from slightly different perspectives. In terms of color, you will just need one blue color that you really like, and that's it. The rest will all be done using different values of that same color. No need for a sketch here, you can if you'd like, but since these are basically just imperfect circles, it's not totally necessary. This process will be very similar to the ones we've done for the other fruit. I'm going to start off by just outlining an imperfect circle with a very light wash of that blue that I've chosen, which is called midnight blue. Go ahead and fill that in. One other tip is if your first layer is ever too wet or there's pedaling or pooling going on, you can soak up some of that excess water by just cleaning off your brush, dabbing it on the paper towel and then just letting the brush soak up some of that excess. Now I've grabbed a darker value of that same blue and I'll start tapping in the shadows around the edges so that base layer is still wet. Then you're just tapping in where the shadows would be on the berry. Those edges are a little harsh, so I'm just [NOISE] rinsing off my brush, dabbing it on the paper towel, and then just blending out those lines a little bit. Once you've added the shadows and you're happy with how the blends look, I'm also going to lift some color just to make this highlight pop a little more. The same process I've used for lifting color on the previous ones. Just rinsing off my brush, dabbing it on the towel and lifting some of that color off the page. Now the next part is adding the petals or the calyx of the blueberry, which we can't do until this complete layer is dry. I'm going to paint a few more berries, change up where the shadows and the highlights are. Then we'll meet back up to add those petals. You can really paint as many as you'd like here the goal is just to practice your perspectives, blending techniques, and just start to build in that muscle memory. That's a huge part of improving your watercolor skills is just muscle memory and letting those brushstrokes come naturally to you. Now once you've practiced a few of these and added in all of your shading and highlights we'll do the finishing touches, which is just adding the calyx or the little petals up at the top. They almost just kind of look like a little asterix. To do that, I'm just going to use a very small brush, round brush. Again, that's the size 1. Then I'm going to get my darkest value of blue and go ahead and add those onto the berry. [NOISE] There you have it. The main thing here with the blueberries is just to work on your shading and highlights and really make it look like it's around berry that's sitting on the page. Definitely keep practicing. Try painting different perspectives. A good way to do that is just by looking at reference photos online and then trying to mimic where the light hits the berries in your painting. That's it for the blue berries, next step we're going to paint some red and green Jalapeno peppers. 10. Jalapenos: Time to get a little spicy. We're going to start painting some jalapeno peppers. I'm going to paint two different examples in this lesson, one red pepper and one green. When I was first practicing these, I don't know why but I had a hard time getting the sketches right. If you have the same troubles as I did, make sure to review that sketching reference PDF. Now let's get started with our two sketches. One's going to be a little more curved here at the bottom and also have a curved stem. The other will just be more straight and basic looking. I'm going to start with the red pepper. I've gotten a bright red color onto my brush and I diluted it, so it's just a very light wash, and I'm going to start filling in the outline of the pepper. I'm just going back over it with a slightly more pigmented color just because it was a little more pink that I wanted. Now before I add the shadows, I'm actually going to do the highlights first. I'm just going to lift some of that color off the page. Since I went over it twice, it might take a couple of times of lifting the color to get that nice highlight. I'm going to do one there and then also a little bit further down the pepper. Another thing to keep in mind when you're doing lifting technique is to make sure that your water is nice and clean. If it starts getting a little too muddy, it can be hard to lift the color properly because there will still be a little bit of color residue on your brush. Those highlights are looking good and then I'm going to go ahead and add some darker shadows. Before we add the shadows, if any of your base layer dried up while you were doing the lifting technique for the highlights, just go over it gently with a damp brush so that we can still get that nice bleed from the wet on wet technique. I'm just re-wetting some of this before I go in and add the shadows. Now I'm grabbing darker value of the vivid red. I'm just going to add in the shadows around where we did the highlights. Again, just tapping those in and then I'll go back in and smooth it out. Another thing I want to mention about the wet on wet watercolor technique is that the quality of your paper makes a huge difference in the way it absorbs water and allows you to blend or lift several layers of paint without getting damaged. Student grade or beginner paper tends to leave harsh lines when you try to blend multiple layers and can lead to frustration and slower progress. On the other hand, while 100% cotton paper is much more expensive, it absorbs water beautifully and allows you to blend and lift color nicely without getting damaged. All that being said, if you can invest in it, I highly recommend switching to 100% cotton paper if you can. It will truly take your watercolor painting to the next level. Once that layer is dry, I'm going to go ahead and add the stem which is going to be in green. Again, to avoid any bleeding, then just make sure this layer is dry. If you do want it to be more loose style, more expressive, then you can definitely leave this wet and then the stem will just bleed into the pepper a bit. I'm just going to fill this in with a lighter value of green and then I'll go back and add some final shadows, and then we'll move on to the green pepper next. I'm having a little bit of the bleeding of colors because I was a little impatient waiting for that first layer to dry, which is fine. But if you don't want to have that happen, just make sure it's completely dry before you start painting the green. I've gotten a darker green. I'm just again, tapping that in. The first layer was a little darker than I hoped for. It's not a huge contrast, but it does give it a little more depth. I'm actually going to lift some color off the top of the stem too. There we go. Next I'm going to work on the green pepper right next to it. Now I'm done with the red one. Moving on to the green pepper, and for this one I'm going to try something different. Instead of lifting the color to get these highlights for where the light is hitting the pepper, I'm actually going to just pencil in where I'm going to leave it white and then I'll see how that looks and see if that helps the highlights pop off a bit more. I'm going to start my first layer with a really light wash of green, just like I did with the others, but I'm not going to fill in the whole layer. I'm going to do everything except those two little spots that I marked for the highlights. Now you can see I've done my base layer and I've left these spaces white for the highlight. Now I'm going to go back in and add my shadows just like I did for the red one. I'll do some up top, some around the highlights, and then on the edges and bottom of the pepper. One piece of advice that can really help you out when you're painting subjects with highlights and shadows is to look at a reference photo online to see where the shadows are and where the light hits off the subject, which is where you'll want to add the highlight. I don't always paint based on reference photos, but it does help when you aren't sure where to place those shadows. Now I've added all the shadows and like I said before, I left these spots white to be the highlights. Just like in this red pepper, we have the lighter spots here and I just wanted these ones on the green one to be a little more noticeable and provide a little more contrast. But one thing I never like to do in my paintings is leave it completely white to where it's just the watercolor paper background. I'm going to take an extremely light wash of the green. My brush is pretty much clean, but it has a little tinted green and I'm just going to go over those white spots. Just be very careful. That took a little bit of blending to make the lines not look so harsh, but it definitely gives a lighter highlight than this one did. This one's a little more blended evenly, but this one pops a little more. It's up to you which method you like, you can do both. Then once this layer is dry, we'll go ahead and add the stem just like we did for the red. This first layer is dry, so now I'll go ahead and add the stem. We'll do a light wash of this green and then add the darker shadows. That's it for the jalapeno peppers. You can keep experimenting with different shapes and perspectives, play around with different ways of adding in the highlights and shadows, or go ahead and meet me in the next lesson and we'll be painting some carrots. 11. Carrots: Carrots are very simple and easy to paint. One of the things I love most about them is the uniqueness in their shapes. You can really play around with giving each one some character, adding some curves at the bottom for the root, changing up the leaf style on top, and playing around with the width and length of the carrot as well. Let's start with a quick sketch. This is the style we'll be painting today. You can see it has a bit of a curved root here at the bottom and then very thin, wispy leaves on top, but feel free to change up the leaf style and make it however you'd like. Now at this point in class, I'm sure you're familiar with the process that's coming up next, I'm going to start by filling in the base layer of the carrot with a really light wash of orange. I'm going to be using this vermilion also from Viviva color sheets. I'll do a light wash there, and then just like we did with the other one's, we're going to start tapping in some darker value of that orange along the carrot to give it some shadow. Now while this base layer is still nice and wet, I'm going to start adding in some shadows around the edges. Now that's a little darker than I want so I'm just going to lighten it up here by adding some water, diluting the pigment a bit, and then I'll start tapping them in. Just work your way around the carrot adding in those shadows. It's always easier to start with lighter shadows and then add in more color as you go. If you start too dark like I did here at the top, it's a lot harder to go back in and try to lighten it up, but you can always add darker colors on top of lighter. I'm just loading up some more color here in my brush then I'll start tapping in again. Now that I have most of the color tapped in, I'm just going to go back through with a clean damp brush and just smooth out these edges so that the lines aren't as harsh when they dry. This blending technique is another essential skill for layering watercolors on top of each other, so it's a very important one to practice. If you notice this is the area that you struggle with, I recommend solely practicing blending on a full sheet of paper. It doesn't have to be on a specific object like this carrot, you can even just paint a basic shape like a circle or square, add a second layer of shadows on top and blend away until you feel like you have more control over it and you can create soft blended gradients. Now once you're happy with the shadows and the blending for the main portion of the carrot, we can go ahead and add the leaves. Like I said before, you can really do any style of leaf you would like, I'm going to be doing these thin, wispy ones. I'm going to take a really dark shade of green, it's almost more black looking, and a very small round brush, probably size one or two, and just start adding in these leaves up here at the top. Remember, this is the part where you can really express your creative freedom and play around with different styles of leaves. You can paint big fluffy leaves, tall skinny ones, leaves that are drooping down the side of the carrot. Just be creative and have fun. All right, and there you have it for the carrot. It's pretty simple and easy. The fun part like I said before, is adding in some character, you can switch up the shape. You can make it wonky. You can change up the leaf style on top. It's really up to you and your creativity. I hope you enjoyed painting that and I'll meet you in the next video. 12. Eggplant: For our very last one, we'll be painting an eggplant using a deep purple mixture of color. The colors that I mixed up for this painting include violet, purple, and a bit of deep black for the shadows. It definitely took me some time to find a mixture that I liked so feel free to play around with different shades of purple, blue, or other dark colors that you have to find a balance that you like. We'll also be using some green for the top of the eggplant. Now, there's always a bit of shape variation with eggplants when you see them at the grocery store, but for the most part you'll notice that they're slightly thinner here at the top, near the stem, and then they get a bit fatter towards the bottom. Make sure you take that into account as you work on your sketch. Once you have your eggplant sketch ready to go, then we can start filling in the color. Again, looking at the reference sheet here, I'm going to actually start with the green top of the eggplant here first, just because it's easier to fix any mistakes if I have to with a darker color on top of light than it is to go lighter on top of dark. I'm going to start just with a nice deep green here for this top part and then we'll start filling in the main body of the eggplant. I've loaded up my brush with a nice deep green and I'm just going to start filling in this top section. Now you don't need to worry too much about having perfectly smooth lines here. As I said before, we can always go back over it with the dark purple if we have to, to clean up any mistakes and just smooth out by going over it with that purple. Now that the top part is done, we will start working on the main body, which is going to be that deep purple color. Again, looking at this reference here, I'm going to have a light wash to just fill in the whole base layer and then go in and add these dark shadows to give it that 3D effect. I'm giving shadows all the way around the edges a little bit on the bottom here, and then up the side. Start with a nice light layer and just fill in the entire thing. I've mentioned this before, but make sure you never go too dark on your first layer if you plan to add more because that can make it hard for those darker layers to contrast enough against the base layer. Always lean more towards a light wash to begin, that way your shadows can be bold and provide a lot of dramatic contrast. While this layer is still wet, go ahead and grab some really dark values of that purpley black mixture that you made, and just start dropping in the shadows around the edges and at the bottom to give it that nice 3D effect and don't be scared to really go dark with this. That's what I love about painting eggplants. I don't normally paint with colors this dark, but it's fun to just play around with it. Give it lots of shadows. Just start dropping it in. I'm going to have the highlight here on this side, so I'm going to make sure to leave it fairly light and then like we've done with some of the other ones in this class, like the lemon, I'm going to go back in at the end and lift some of that color to create a nice highlight. I'm going to do a few rounds of this actually where I just drop in this dark, violet black mixture. Now before I lift some color for that highlight, I noticed that some of these shadows are just a little bit rougher than I like, so I don't want those lines to dry as rough as that. I'm just taking a clean, damp brush and just blending that out. If you ever run into that problem when you're doing wet on wet technique like this, sometimes those edges dry really harshly. You can always just blend it while it's still wet. It's ready. Then for the final portion of this video, I'll just rinsed off my brush, dab it on the paper towel and I'm going to lift some of this color to make the highlight a little more dramatic here, where the light is hitting the eggplant. Just lifting some of that color right off the page. Now that looks pretty good. I'm just going to add some little finishing touches here on the top, to smooth out some of these lines and then we'll be all done with the eggplant. We're all done with the eggplant. I hope you had fun painting that one. It's always one of my favorites. Like I said, I don't normally work with colors that are this dark, so it's fun to just play around and get expressive with it. That wraps up all of the fruits and veggies, so next I will meet you in the next video to start our class project. 13. Class Project: Now that you know how to paint all 10 fruits and vegetables, it's time to create a piece of art work to brighten up your kitchen walls using what you learned in the class. Now, it's totally up to you to decide what you'd like to create, but I'll give you a few ideas to help get you started. Number one, you can keep it simple and choose one or multiple other foods from today's class to paint and hang up on your walls. Super simple and easy. Number two, you could create a set or series highlighting a few of your favorites from the class or maybe choose a theme like citrus fruits and paint three different pieces to hang next to each other featuring the lemons, limes, and orange slices. I'll show you what I created for my project which is this market fresh fruit sign, which is actually now available as a print in my online shop. I digitize my paintings and created this sign using text and other design elements in Photoshop. You have total creative freedom here, just have fun with it and use it as another opportunity to practice all the skills you learned in the class. On a similar note, if you'd like to eventually start selling your artwork, the first step will be to learn how to digitize it so you can easily place it onto products like prints, greeting cards, calendars, stickers, and more. If this is something you're interested in learning, make sure to check out my other class called Digitizing your Artwork. In that class, you'll learn my step-by-step process for turning art into prints in less than an hour. I really hope you enjoy this project. Don't forget to share your work. Tag me on Instagram @petals.by.priya so I can see what you create and share it on my stories as well. Once you're done with the project, I'll see you in the next and final video to wrap up the class. 14. Final Thoughts: You made it to the end of the class. Thank you so much for joining me as we learned how to paint these ten different fruits and vegetables. I hope you had fun getting loose and expressive with your colors and shapes and creating your very own piece of artwork to hang on your walls. Please don't forget to upload your work, share it on Instagram. Tag me at petals by Priya and I'll share it on my stories as well. If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm always reachable on Instagram DMs or you can send me an email as well and I'll leave a link to that below. If you enjoyed this class, please take a moment to leave a quick review or feel free to check out some of my other classes. I would absolutely love to see you there. Thank you again and happy painting from me to you.