Watercolor Still Life; Capturing Transparency w/ Painting Citrus Fruits

1. Intro: Painting transparent subjects is a lot of fun, and citrus fruit is a perfect subject for getting to play with both light and transparency. Hey there. I'm Tanja, I'm an artist based in Denmark, and in this class, we'll be painting wedges of citrus in Watercolor. We're not going to focus on details, and our goal is not hyperrealism, but we'll take a look at some of the key points that can help improve our paintings, ways to add texture, and we'll go through the process of painting a couple of wedges of orange and a wedge of lemon. So if that sounds fun to you, let's get right into it. 2. Supplies: Let's have a look at the supplies. For this class, you're going to need some watercoloors. I recommend having at least some version of your primaries, but we're going to go exactly which colos in the class. You're also going to need some watercolor paper. I'm using fabriano artistico in extra white hot press. I do recommend using cotton paper, but you can use any watercol paper you have. And if you want to create your own sketches, you may want some sketching paper as well, unless you're fine with sketching directly on the Watercolor paper. You may need some tape to tape your paper onto your work surface. And of course, we're going to need some brushes. The main brush I'm going to be using throughout this class is bimten and it's number five. These brushes are slightly different to your normal round brushes. They're more of a mop brush shape, so they may take some getting used to it. But these are going to be the main brushes I'm going to be using in my classes moving forward because I've fallen absolutely in love with them. I'm going to be using one flat brush to help apply a background color. And you may want one or two brushes for lifting. I've got some flat brushes where I've cut down the bristles and one round brush with more firm fibers, and as always, I'll be using a separate brush for mixing my paints. You'll need some masking fluid. I'm using this one by whole bind. We will also need a tool to apply the masking fluid. I'm going to be using a dip pen, but you can use any tool you prefer. You will need a pencil and some erasers. I'm using a mechanical pencil in 0.2, a normal eraser, and a needed eraser. Some sort of palette for mixing your paint. I'm going to be using a plate that I found in a thrift shop, cloth to wipe out brushes, some tissue to help get rid of excess water from the brush, and to help lift paint, and finally, some water. Let's get into it. 3. Before Choosing Your Colors: Before we move on to picking any of the colors we're going to be using, we're going to have a look at a few paint or call qualities that may be worth considering. But I do want to preface that anything I'm going to say, although it may have the potential to help you get a better end result, none of it are hard set rules because in the end it all comes down to technique, style, personal preference, et cetera. They're just guidelines. So I've got a good selection of paints here that I'm going to be narrowing down to a smaller number according to these qualities. Doesn't mean that you can't use the colors I'm going to be taking away, and it also doesn't mean that using the colors that are going to be left are instantly going to give you a good result. It depends on how you use them. But we'll get to that all in good time. The first quality we're going to have a look at is granulation. Granulation is a pigment property, so some pigments granulate and some don't so, although this feature or quality isn't exclusive to watercolor, it's usually more prevalent in watercolor due to the way we use the paints. It can give you really cool effects and textures or unwanted textures depending on your style or what you're painting. As an example, granulation may be really fun if you're painting landscapes and you're painting something like stormy skies, moss, stone, concrete, and stuff like that. Whereas if you're painting portraits, and let's say you're painting a baby or a child with very smooth skin, this texture may not be what you want. Some of the most commonly used colors are granulating, such as ultramarine blue or cobalt. Lot of them are going to have very subtle granulation. So for something like citrus, it's usually not going to be an issue. I will quickly add that it's worth knowing your pigments and colors in your palate. The reason being is that here as an example, we've got two colours peacock blue and quinaqudon scallet. Both are marked as being granulating, and technically they are, but I do find that the granulation in the quinaquidon scalet doesn't show up enough for me to count it as being a granulating color. It may show up in some mixes, but it usually doesn't bother me. So I'm allowing the quinacudon scalet to stay in the mix. Second quality worth considering is opacity. So how transparent opaque your paint is. This is also a pigment quality. And again, depending on what you're painting, this may or may not be something you want to consider. So if painting a glowy, transparent or translucent citrus fruit, using transparent calls are going to allow for more light coming through the paint, allowing us to see more of the paper underneath, which is going to help give us a really glowy effect. On your paint, you'll see a symbol, and depending on the brand, this may be a square or a circle. For Holbein, the circle indicates the opacity and the square indicates the staining power. Empty circle indicates a fully transparent cola, half filled circles, semi opaque or semi transparent, and the fully cod in circle considered opaque colas. I'm not getting rid of all the semi transparent or semi opaqes, but if you are playing along, we want to get rid of any of the colors that contain white. I am by no means a watercolor purist in the traditional sense, and white definitely has its place. The problem with white is that when using it in mixes, it tends to muddy up colors a lot more easily. It also allows for less light to come through, which to some extent is true for all semi opaques. But with white, it's on another level, so we want to get rid of those. Third quality is the number of pigments each color has. Some colors like quinaquiomagena, has one pigment, pigment red 122. Others are made up of multiple pigments, and these formulas or combinations can vary from brand to brand. So for color like indigo, each brand may have a different color recipe for what their indigo is made up of. But why is that important? Mixing colours, every time we add another pigment to the mix, we run the risk of muddying up our colour a bit more. Kind of like cooking where a couple of spices are going to make the dish super tasty. But adding all the spices from your cabinet doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to make the dish even tastier because some spices just don't go together. The same with color mixing. You could create one mix using just two pigments to create an orange. And even though there are other factors that are going to play into what this orange is going to look like, there's at least a good chance we'll end up with a decent, clean orange. Whereas if we mix together a bunch of different yellow pigments and a bunch of different red pigments, there is a high chance or risk that some of these pigments or spices are going to muddy up the flavor. This is also one of the reasons why some artists prefer using only single pigment colors. Now we don't have to exclude colors that include multiple pigments in this class. But for the sake of this lesson, let's get rid of all the colors with multiple pigments so we're left with single pigment colors. That certainly leaves us with a lot less colors. And if we want, we can take it a step further by going back to opacity. So even though we took away the colors with white, when it comes to mixing and layering, transparent colors are often the best for this. We're going to allow the semi opaques to stay, but let's get rid of the folio opaques. I have a couple of cadmiums here, so I'm going to get rid of those. There is one more thing to consider, and that is the temperature of each color. We're not going to worry too much about this because it's not a hot set rule, and we are going to see the difference when we start mixing. So if something doesn't work, we will find out. But the reason why this may be important is that in some cases when mixing a colour, so let's go back to the example of mixing an orange, and let's say we want a really bright sunny orange. If we take a warm yellow and we mix that with a cool red, it may not look very sunny. But if we mix that same warm yellow with a warmer red, it'll very likely be closer to what we wanted. So once again, none of these are hot set rules. You don't have to follow them, but it's worth having at least some sort of awareness of these factors when picking colors for a painting. So let's move on. 4. Study; Sketch: We're going to do a study of the lime, so we first going to do a sketch and then move on to picking the colors. Now, you don't have to exclusively use colors that match the deduction process from the last lesson because depending on the selection of colors you have available to you, that may not leave you with the most ideal color options. To keep things simple, I'm going to use some of these colors in the class, but we'll get to that in the next lesson. For now, let's get started with the sketch. You can do both wedges if you want. I'm going to focus on the one in the front or to the right. If we hold our pencil to our reference, we'll be able to get the approximate angle for this top line. This does not have to be accurate. It's just a study. Now, the length of this line is just under two times the length of the height. So if we sketch in the basic shape, something like this, we can quickly check the proportions by taking the height. And then if we place it two times next to each other up here, we want this to be just a tiny bit longer than that line. And minus a tiny bit too short, but it's okay. One of the best things about painting food is that it's so forgiving. We can alter the shape of this wedge of lime quite a bit, and it's still gonna look like a wedge of lime, so don't worry about it. Then we can finish off the shape and add in a couple of those remaining details. Something like this, it does not have to be perfect. We've also got that very highlighted area up near the top. So I'm gonna draw that in. And then we've got the shadow coming out somewhere around here as well as down here. And then I think I'm going to finish off my shadow, making it slightly shorter and more slended on that final line. I feel like that looks better with the crop of my papa, and that's about it for the sketch. Before moving on to pina colors, I've also made this little troubleshooting checklist. You can go ahead and make one if you want. We'll use this to go over a few key points that are common mistakes a lot of people make when trying to paint realistic wedges of citrus or other translucent fruits. So we know what to avoid. And we can fill in the first one right now. Outlines. When painting something like this, especially around that top section where the light is really coming through, we want to try and avoid having visible outlines. Outlines tend to make things look more illustrated. So for a stylistic choice, you could choose to keep them. But they can also make things like this look more heavy and boxed in, and that's not what we want. At least not if we want this to look realistic. So we want to get rid of any heavy outlines using our needed eraser. Wherever we're going to have those daca values or omit tones, we may be able to leave some of our sketch lines a bit heavier, but I'd recommend just lightening the whole sketch, especially up on that top section as well as in the shadow because shadows definitely don't have outlines either. Awesome. Let's move on and pick some colors. 5. Study; Color palette: We're going to pick our color palette so get out your paints. As I mentioned before, you can pick any of the colors you have available to you. They do not have to follow the criteria from the previous lesson. But to keep it simple and keep my selection at a minimum, I'll be using the colors I was left with, and I realized I forgot this one, I'm going to add that in. A couple of things though before we get started. This one, so manganese blue is typically a granulating color, but the one by Holbein is not a true manganese, so that is why it still remains in the selection. I'm also going to get rid of these three. You can use purples and browns for mixing, but by taking these away, I'm going to be left with only primaries, making my selection as clean and limited or minimal as possible. This is what they look like on watched. It's actually a really good mixing palette for mixing pretty much any color. Oh we've got all three primaries represented in what would be considered both warm and cool versions. But I encourage you to not worry too much about color temperature, and this is why. So if we take a look at our reference and see which colors we need to mix for the pulp, we basically have one color but slightly different versions of that color for the light areas, mid tones, and the dk. But there's never just one right answer when it comes to color mixing. So instead of worrying about the color temperature, we want to look at the colors we have available and figure out how to mix those colors. As an example, we could choose to look for the color in our selection that is the closest to the color we want to end up in order to mix green, we need blue and yellow, so let's start with the yellow. And in this case, I would say that the imidazloon yellow or the imidaz lone lemon are the closest. Let's try imidazloon yellow. This is one of my favorite yellows. It's a very neutral yellow. It's not really warm nor cool. It does have a very low tinting strength, though, so when using it in mixes, you do tend to need quite a lot of it, but it's a very transparent yellow, so perfect for painting these glowy wedges of lime. We don't want our mix to look too vibrant. We need more of a dirty green. So let's try and mix it with the Vallow blue red shade, which is a red leaning blue. This is not too far off, at least not for the lightest of the mixes we need. Just for the sake of it, let's try and mix that same blue with the imitazon lemon. So more green, leaning yellow. Very similar and also a good option. Both of these are still a tattoo clean for those mid tones and the dogs. But all we need to do to mix our neutrals is to mix all three primaries. And since we've got our yellow and our blue pigment, let's add some red. I'm gonna go for quinacrium scalt. And so if we mix these trios together, we should be able to create some mixes that are perfect for this lime wech. We're just going to do some quick semi sloppy mixing to illustrate it. So this may not be perfect, but hopefully you'll be able to see that they'll work. But what if we use colours that were less close to the mix we wanted to end up with? Let's try and use the Manganese blue. This is a very yellow, leaning blue under color wheel. If we mix that with Imidazilon yellow, we're going to get a green that is very vivid, too clean for what we need. But if we add a touch of that red to dirty it up a bit, it's going to work perfectly. Of course, you may have colors that are going to be less ideal for the mix you want to create. As an example, if we take a very orange yellow, mix that with our blue. The midtones and darks may be close, but it's just not yellow enough. It doesn't mean we can't use it, though, but because our yellow is already so orange, instead of adding red, we want to add more yellow. So we don't always necessarily have to include all three of our primary pigments, so a red, yellow, and blue pigment, but including multiple colors in one way or another will often allow us to create not only more accurate mixes, but also more interesting mixes, which is going to add more life and oftentimes more realism to our paintings. So have a look at the colors you have available to you and pick the colors you want to use. For my blue, I think more people have theos in their palette than Manganese. So I'm going to use a h blue. And just for fun, I'm going to use the yellow leaning version, which is technically further from what we need than if I use the red leaning version. But both are going to work just fine. For my yellow, I'm going to use the Imidazoon yellow, so the most basic yellow. And then to help bring in that warmth and dirty of the color, going to add the cinacrone scarlet. This red together with either one of the theto should also allow us to make some version of a purple. And although that is not an absolute necessity, we can add some of this in the shadow areas completely optional, of course. Let's move on to some color mixing. 6. Study; Painting: We're going to get some color onto our study, but first we can fill out the next two key points on our checklist. Opaque versus transparent, and this goes back to the pigment qualities. One of the best things about watercolor is luminosity. So when painting something like this where the subject is transparent or translucent, using transparent or semi transparent colors will allow for a lot more light to go through, making everything look more glowy and luminous. But also, if we're planning on doing a lot of glazing and mixing, transparent colors just tend to do better for this. We can also put down flat versus interesting color. So what does this mean? We want to really look at and study the colors of our subject and notice all the small shifts in color as it reacts to the light and colors of the surroundings. Instead of using a color straight from the tube, so in this case, I'm going to go in with leaf green, which is a pretty good lime color, and then we need some shadow. So we're going to use black. Black is great, by the way. I'm not against having black in your watercolor palette, but this is not the way to use it. This is going to result in flat, uninteresting washes of color. We could still use leaf green for our base, but we want to mix it with other colors like yellow or blue to create these subtle changes, which is going to breathe a lot more life into our painting. So let's mix up our colors. We're going to start with two color mixes. The first one will be for the lightest values. I'm going to start with the yellow. Then carefully add in a touch of blue to create a bright green. You may not have to be as careful with your color mixes, but the yellow I'm using has such a low tinting strength that it barely takes anything to overpower it. Finally, a touch of red to give it more of that dirty or olivi tone. That looks pretty good. It doesn't have to be perfect. For the second mix, we're going to do pretty much the same thing, but adding a touch more of the blue and red to create a slightly deeper color. You really don't have to worry about getting it to be exactly like in the reference. It's just a study. The goal is to go over the different points on our checklist, as well as familiarize ourselves with the different techniques we're going to be using. Et's watch and see what we've got. Close, but a bit too green. Maybe something like this. Close enough. Before going in with any paint, we can fill out the next point on our checklist, preserving or planning our lights or highlights. So either masking of highlights or painting around them. In either case, it's about being aware of them, so we don't paint over them. On this study, the only extreme highlight we have is right along the top edge. So we're just going to paint around it in this case. For the first layer, we want to establish a base colour, as well as add in a few details or texture, both by adding and lifting paint. So let's wet out paper, wetting just the pulp. We want it to be nice and wet with an even sheen without any pooling of water. If it's too dry, we may not have enough working time to add the details. Then we can go straight in with the lightest of the colmixes adding this along the top portion, just a thin wash. Instead of going straight across, we want to mimic the texture we're seeing in the reference. So we're just going to go in with small strokes like this, making some of them form small U shapes or tear drop shapes, and we can then pick up our second colmix and add that in. Don't worry about copying the reference. Right now, we're just looking to get a fuel for the different techniques. While the paper is still wet, we can add in some highlights, so we can rinse and wipe off our brush, getting rid of as much of the excess water as we can. And we can then go in and use the brush and pick up small teardrop shapes as well. But We're going to allow that to dry, and then once dry, we can go in with a second layer. For this layer, we want to add in the deeper tones near the bottom. And in my case, I definitely need to increase the saturation up here as well. We're going to turn the second Clomix into our shadow color on deepest Clomix. We want a green that is more cool toned, so we're going to use more of the blue and less of the red. That looks okay. Let's go straight in. We're gonna wet our paper again, and then this time we're gonna apply both colors using the technique from before, adding in texture as we're adding the color. I'm gonna pull this colo mix down along the bottom as well, where the pulp becomes slightly lighter right before we get to the white portion of the rind, which I know is technically not called the rind, but hopefully you can forgive me. I'm not claiming to teach botanicals and then the shadow color as well. If you're not a fan of lifting the highlights while the paint is still wet, you can go in after the paint is dried, take a clean, damp brush, and lift out the highlights like this. Depending on the staining power of your pigments, this may be super easy or slightly challenging. Let's quickly finish this off by adding some green right here to the top. And right here for the outside of the rind. What we've got so far looks pretty good, but it doesn't appear to be very luminous. And that brings us to the last point on our checklist, pushing value and contrast, which may be one of the most common issues. In order to have a sense of light, we need to have ducks. But when looking at this, we still have the most light coming from the white of the paper. So we need to fix that. We're going to add colour first to the white portion of the rind and then the background and the shadow. According to our reference, the rind is green, but why not have some fun and add some more interesting color? You can mix up any shadow color you want. I'm going to go for a fairly neutral blue and a fairly neutral purple. Any color will technically work, but we may want to avoid making it too saturated. Shadows are typically less saturated than the rest. Et's go straight in. I'm going to start with the blue. Transitioning into the purple. D. Back to the blue. And back to purple. There is no rhyme or reason to when I'm adding blue or purple. A good rule of thumb could be that wherever your eyes perceive the color as being warmer, add maybe the purple and wherever you perceive it to be more cool, add the blue. In this case, the difference between the colors is minimal, so it really doesn't matter. Lastly, we want to get some colour onto the background and onto the shadow underneath the wedge. To keep it simple, I'm going to use the same colours I used for the rind. So I'm going to mix up a bit more of the purple. We're going to first wet the whole background. This is going to help the pigment spread evenly across the surface. Once we've got that, we can pick up the background color. In my case, that's the blue. If you want, you can allow this to dry before going in and adding the shadow. I'm going to fill it in straight away. Because the paper is still quite wet, this may cause the edges to feather more than what we'd like, but we really don't need to worry about that for this study. Even though most of the values are quite light, hopefully you'll be able to tell that already it's starting to look more luminous because we're no longer comparing the wedge to a bright white background, and the pulp is now encapsulated or outlined by those deeper shadow tones. So if you're ready, let's move on and paint a beautiful luminous wedge of orange. I 7. Oranges; Picking Our Colors: Going to provide my sketch in the projects and resource steps, so feel free to use that if you want. You can also create your own or trace the reference. It's completely up to you. But before we get started with the painting, get out your paints and let's pick some colors. When looking at the reference, the main colors we're seeing yellows and oranges. Starting with the yellow, the Imidazlon yellow I used for the study could definitely be used for this painting as well. It's a beautiful, clean and very transparent yellow, but because it has such a low tinting strength, I don't think it's quite strong enough for these oranges. Another one of my go to yellows is permanent yellow light. This is a beautifully bright, warm yellow, and it definitely packs a punch. So I'm going to go with this one. If you wanted to keep your color palette as limited as possible, a good option would typically be to go with one of each of your primaries. So a red, yellow, and a blue. So let's take a look at that. Depending on the colors you have available to you, you may have some better options. But just as an example, I've got two reds here, acron red and pyrolRd. If we were to mix these with our yellow, we'll definitely get some beautiful oranges. And both of these could be used for this painting. However, I would love to be able to really enhance that light and that glow by bringing in some clean, saturated colours. So these may not be the best solution for this painting. Let's have a look at some premixed oranges. I've got three of my favorites here. We've got transparent orange by Sminke. Brilliant orange by Albin, And yellow orange by Michello. Let's watch those and compare it to the other mixes. Water colour does lose some of the vibrancy as it dries. So in order to do a fair comparison, we can allow all the swatches to dry completely. It's worth noting that all of these oranges are beautiful in their own right, and what you're going to consider the most ideal choice will depend on your personal style and preferences. There is no right or wrong. I love clean and saturated colors, so my eye instantly goes to these two. The brilliant orange will be able to offer deeper values on its own than the yellow orange. So I think I'm going to go with that one. Limited can mean many things. It could be three colors, four, five, six, or even more, and there are many advantages to using a limited palette. But sometimes depending on what you're painting, it's worth bringing in one or two more colors. In this case, I'm going to go with four colors for this painting permanent yellow light, brilliant orange, quinaquidone red in order to be able to get even deeper tones and to help mix neutrals, and they look blue, yellow shade also for mixing. Just a quick tip before we move on. Most often when painting, I work from a palette with half pens or whole pens for that matter. But whenever I'm working from a separate palette like this, sometimes I've got paint left over, and this may not look like a lot, but it can go a long way. So what I'll do is take an exact knife, pick it up and transfer it to my palette. That way you don't have to get rid of usable paint. Once you've picked your colors, let's move on and get started. 8. Oranges; Planning: Before we get started with the painting, it's always a good idea to have a plan. So we're going to do a quick study both to help plan our light and to help familiarize ourselves with the different colors. So let's do a quick drawing of the two wedges. It does not have to look good. If we look at the pulp, where we've got the most light coming through is up here, where the wedge is the thinnest. So here, here, and here. We've got less light coming through down here because this side is affected by the shadow from the second wedge. The deeper cool tones are going to come in somewhere around here. So something like that. And up here as well. And when I say deeper, I'm not only talking about values, but also the colors going from those bright yellows to a more yellow tone orange, mid tone orange, and then a red toned orange. The deepest tones we've got are going to sit somewhere around here along this line. This may seem really obvious, but the reason why it's a good idea to consider these things before we get started with the painting is so that we're able to go in with more confident layers and color mixes. Because in order to really keep this sense of light, we want to keep these layers as clean and vibrant as possible. The more we go in and mess around and we add some color and then lift it, et cetera, the more of that light we risk losing. Let's have a look at the color mixes. It's up to you if you want to color match to the reference. I'm going to go for super clean colours. We're going to create four color mixes for the pulp. The first one is going to be pure yellow. The second mix is going to be yellow with a touch of orange. For the third mix, I'm going to mix orange with a touch of yellow. And for the fourth mix, I'm going to mix orange with a touch of red. The exact amounts are not important. What we want is a range of colors that go from a bright sunny yellow and gradually goes down to the deeper oranges. My mixes are not an exact match to the reference, and it truly does not matter. We will also need a color for the white portion of the rind, which I think is technically not called the ind, but please bear with me. I'm going to mix up my orange, yellow, and blue. I'm going for something like a brown tope. This should work as a decent base, though we are going to glazer it with different colours. And again, don't worry about the exact color. We don't have to match everything to our reference photo. It's okay to do an artistic interpretation of what we see, and that's part of what makes art fun, right? You can go more purple, green, blue. I'll still work. The most important thing is the values. When we move on to our painting, the first thing we're going to put down is a base color for the rind, or at least the white portion. This will make it easier to work on and control the edges for this section without affecting the color layers within the pulp. And as we go through the painting process, we will bring in more colors to this area, like right here where the color from the wedge in the front affect the color of the rind on this one. For the pulp, we're going to start with a base of yellow. Then transition into the bright yellow orange Then the mid tone or deeper orange. And finally, near the bottom, we're going to introduce the deepest orange or the red toned orange. Of course, we'll also need to add some colour to the rest of the rind. And again, we're going to be using a variety of yellows or oranges depending on the area we're painting. We're then going to go in with a second layer, and you can work wet and wet if you prefer, but I'm going to keep it super relaxed and work wet and dry. With this layer, we're going to bring in an interpretation of the texture we see. And don't worry. I will be explaining and showing this in more detail as we get into it. For now, let's just do some swift strokes. And aside from texture, we're also going to use this layer to intensify the colour saturation. And then finally for the pulp, we're going to go in with some light glazes. I'm going to mix up some more of each of my colors, and then let's move on and get started with the painting. 9. Oranges; First Layer; Base: Cleaned up my sketch, and the first thing we're going to do according to our checklist is get rid of the outlines. So we want to take our needed eraser and lighten them, and I recommend lightning them as much as you feel comfortable with. But of course, we want to be able to still see them. I'm going to keep mine slightly darker than what I normally would because I still want you to be able to see them on camera. Next up, we can have a look at our highlights. It's up to you how much you want to mask off. I'm going to do just a few of the brightest highlights. So this one right here. I'm going to keep this one lighter as well. Up here, I'm not worrying too much about copying the reference, but I do want to try and capture a similar glistening effect. And of course, you're also more than welcome to Mask off more than what I'm doing. It just depends on your comfort level. And then some right here as well. Et's go straight in and add the first layer to the white portion of the rind. We're going to wet our paper. Just like this, I want an even shine, but I don't want it to be too wet. Then we can pick up our color and go in with that first layer. The reason why we want to work wet and wet for this is to avoid getting super crisp edges. This may seem counterintuitive because when looking at a wedge of orange in front of us, that line between the white portion and the pulp is crisp. But because we're dealing with a semi opaque or semi translucent object where the light is coming through, those edges may look softer. And so having a slightly less crisp line is going to help with the illusion of our subject glowing. As it dries, we're gonna keep an eye on those edges and clean them up if needed. As you can see with my application, I'm trying to mimic those wobbly edges. You don't have to, but it does give it a nice effect. I'm going to go in again straightaway without waiting for it to dry, just to deepen the values. We don't need the values to be perfect. We can always come back and darken them later. Same with the colour, we are going to come back later and do some glazing. For now we're just looking to get a start with the rind with this first color layer. Work in your own pace. Don't rush it. I feel one of the benefits of starting with this part of the wedge is it's the only part where we really don't need to worry too much about the colour. We don't need to keep it clean or cloy, so it's a nice way to ease into the painting. Gonna move up to the second wedge. Same thing. Gonna wet the paper. For this one, we want the call to gradually become lighter as we go down the side. Something like this. And just so that we're not leaving this empty, we're going to pick up some of our brightest orange. Add that in. It does not have to be perfect. I'm gonna quickly rinse and wipe off my brush, clean up the edges, and then I'm just gonna go in and fill in the rest. If you choose to go in multiple times like this, you want to be aware of how wet your paper is. If it's too dry, it may be better to let it dry completely and then go in again. I don't think I'm able to get in a second layer of this one without causing too many issues. So I'm going to wait for this to dry and then go in again. I'm gonna use whatever little color I've got left to just slightly deepen these values. Even though this may look dark compared to the white of the paper, we still need to go danger, but we're not going to do that just yet. Once dry, we can get started with the first layer for the pulp. Our goal for this layer is to establish a base color. This is going to be the lightest values we see within the texture and the pulp. We want to keep it one or two values lighter than what we want the end result to be because we are going to go in with more glazes and texture on top. So let's get started. Starting with the wedge in the front, we're going to wet out paper. And then we're going to pick up our color mixes one by one, starting with the yellow. Gonna put that up here. So anywhere where we see those really bright yellows coming through, it's okay if some of the colo bleeds onto the rind. Just keep an eye on it as it dries to avoid hot edges. Gonna pick up the next one, add that as a transition color. Maybe a touch over here just to help bring in that glow. Not too much, though, because we really don't have a lot of those yellows going on over here. But it's going to help add some warmth once we go it with some of the deeper colmixes. You can do this using glazing in those final layers, though. Gonna bring in the deep orange, follow along here and really just fill in this entire remaining section. You don't have to be too precious or worry about the placement of the colas. Just follow approximately what you see in the reference. And finally, some of our last calmics still keeping everything fairly light and less intense than what we want on our final painting. Gonna move around the shape, something like that. Gonna push the pigment away from this bit. Like that. Onto the next one. Same thing. We're gonna start by wetting the paper. Oh going in with our yellow onto the bright bits up here. And over here, we can be more generous with the yellow and this one because we've got more light coming through, so we've got more of those brighter tones. Picking up the next one. Don't worry about perfection. We just don't want to go too dark. Going in with the deeper orange. And And finally, our deepest colmis. Let's clean up the edges. Like that. I also have this tiny bit up here. I'm going to clean that up before it dries completely. I don't recommend this. Wait for it to dry before lifting, but I'm going to soak up any moisture really quickly, so hopefully it's going to be okay. Really, this is just me being impatient. If you've run out of the color for the rind, just like me, we're going to mix up a bit more. We're going to use this to add some of the deeper values up near the top, so we don't need a lot. I'm going to go in wet and wet, but you can also go in wet and dry and then blend it out. So we're going to add that here, following this line, keeping an eye on the edges. Gonna rinse my brush and clean this up. For the second one tiny bit up here. And maybe over here as well. Blending that out. Finally, for this first layer, we're going to add some colour to the outer portion of the rind. For this, I'm just going to go in with the bright orange. But you're more than welcome to go in with more color mixes to get it closer to the reference. My main goal for this is just to get some colour onto the paper to finish up the first layer. But if you find it distracting to have these bright values near the shadow areas, you may want to go in with some darker mixes. Hh Okay, we're going to allow this to dry and then go in with a second layer. You can go in wet and dry if you want. I'm going to go in wet and wet, but I'm only wetting the paper within the sketch or wedge itself because I want the outside edge to stay crisp and still have a soft edge between the white and orange portion of the rind. And 10. Oranges; Second Layer; Pulp : With the second layer, our main focus is going to be adding the texture. We're not going to worry about recreating the exact details of the reference. Our goal is not hyperrealism, but we do still want some texture to give it a more realistic look. So let's have a closer look at the texture, and I think it goes without saying that you should not look at this as a scientific explanation. If we look at the wedge very close up, the pulp consists of small shape similar to this. Some of them may look like teardrop shapes, some of them may be slightly longer or tapered in both ends, and some of them may look really squished. So what we want to do is imagine these shapes within our wedge and create a similar pattern. For the most part, I'll be filling them in like this. And then in some areas, we may want to go in with some outlines just like this or in some of the areas where we really don't see a lot of detail at all, we may want to go in with a solid layer of color, deal us choice. This is not going to give us a fully realistic, completely accurate rendering of the reference, but it's a fairly easy technique that will give us a nice texture without too much effort. This is optional, but I'm going to mix up another shade of orange using my yellow and my red. It's not a necessity, but it's to give me an orange that is I can't really describe it in any other way than less clean or more dirty looking. It's not at all a bad thing. It just has more of a neutral feel or less vibrant. Another way of mimicking this, depending on the colors you're using is to add a tiny bit of blue or maybe even some sienna into an orange mix. Let's start with the wedge in the back. The details are soft on this one, so it'll give us a chance to practice without it feeling as detrimental. We're going to go straight in, and we want to at least approximately follow the colors from the base layer. So up in the yellow areas, we want to use mostly yellow, maybe some of the brighter orange. And in the more orange areas, we want to use those same colors and maybe some of the deeper tones. Use the reference as inspiration to figure out where you want to add outlines or where you want to fill in the center of the shapes. But exactly where you do what isn't really that important. One tip, I guess, is to not go in with a paint mix that's too dry, so one with very little water. And the reason for this is the more dry your paint mixes, the more of the pigment is going to sit on top of the paper, which means it's going to be easier to lift or smudge if we go it with more layers. Some smudging or lifting is unavoidable, though. That's just how Watercolor works. The more layers you build up or the more intangible layers of colours are. The more pigment concentration you have on your paper, the more easily some of that pigment is likely going to lift, and we're okay with some lifting for this. In fact, because the lifting is going to cause the edges to look softer or more blurry, that's exactly why I'm choosing to go in wet and dry. We're not looking for super crisp texture, so we want those edges to soften, at least to some extent. You may want to rinse your brush between some color changes. So if we've been using orange and want to go in with yellow, we may want to rinse our brush. Keep referring back to the reference. Look at the direction of which those small shapes go and look out for any color changes. Even though we're not concerned with creating an exact copy, we still want it to look similar. And I know it looks strange at this stage. If you don't feel too comfortable with this technique, I recommend going in and doing a test on a separate piece of paper. Just trying out the technique, get more comfortable with it, and then come back to the painting. But honestly, don't worry about it. Just have a go. The worst thing that can happen is we mess up a painting, and so what? We'll still learn something from it. Actually, if you do have paintings that you're not happy with. So paintings where you have them in a pile, you don't really want to show them to anyone or paintings that you just never quite finished for whatever reason. Take a few minutes and write some notes on the side or on the back, analyze what it is you're not happy with or what it is you want to improve on. Maybe you used a color combination that you didn't like, or maybe a certain technique didn't work out. Write down any and all information like that. You could even cut out pieces from the painting and clue into a sketchbook and write the notes in there. The reason why I recommend this is because it can really help our future selves. One, writing something down makes us remember it a lot better because how many times have you tried doing something? Realized you didn't like it, and then a few months down the line, we do it again. I know I have. And it's also a good way to keep track of things you may want to practice or improve on. Once we've done, we should have something similar to this, and we want to allow that to completely dry. Once fully dry, we're going to go in and glaze on top of this, basically using the same colours we used for the base. So we're going to go in, pick up our colour, add this in one stroke with minimal pressure, pick up our next color, add that in, and continue repeating this step over and over. So in the yellow areas, we want to use mainly yellow. In the bright orange areas, we may want to use mostly bright orange, et cetera. Don't be too strict with this, though. It's just a guideline because we also want to use this as an opportunity to make color adjustments. So if we need daca values or daca colors in some areas, we can add that. If we want to try and brighten up some areas, we may want to add a more yellow base, et cetera. The only thing is we want to try and do this in one layer. Because as we're adding this, some of the pigment is going to lift and some of those edges are going to soften. And so the more we do this, the more that pigment is going to lift, and the more detail we're going to lose. Now, you may be able to go over the same area multiple times. Use a light touch and keep an eye on how the paint underneath reacts. Reasons why you may want to go over the same area could be either adjusting the color or if you simply want to smudge the texture a bit more, so soften those edges. Just be careful. We don't want to lose all the texture. When we're done, we should have something like this. Let's go ahead and do this to the wedge in the front as well. Same way, building up the pattern followed by the glasses. You can also use the same technique with more precision. So go in and follow the reference more accurately both in terms of the pattern and the colours you see. That is, if you want an even more realistic look closer to the reference. But I really hope you agree with me when I say that this is a fairly easy technique to use. I wanted to include a technique that would give really good results with minimal difficulty. A For this wedge to save you some time, I'm going to speed up the footage. Not too much. I definitely still want you to be able to see what's going on. But since the technique is very repetitive, I believe it'll be okay. Citrus fruits are so much fun to paint, and it's warm I go to subjects whenever I feel like painting something, but I don't quite know what to paint. It's also visually a really appealing subject. Because the wedge in the front is less out of focus and has more crisp detail, I am spending a bit longer on building up the texture. It's not necessarily going to reflect in the final painting because once we go over it with glazes, a lot of the detail is going to soften or be somewhat hidden behind those new layers of color. Another way of painting these orange wedges with a very similar technique would be to go in wet on wet. So wet the paper, pick up the color, and then add the texture. And if I were to render this in full realism, that's probably the technique I would go for because that way we'd be able to control how soft or how crisp the edges are depending on how wet or dry our paper is. Doing it that way, you may want to consider adding in the base color at the same time. So rather than going in with glazes, after adding the texture, zoom into your reference and follow not only the pattern itself, but also the color surrounding it. It may take more time and precision, but it may also be a better way of getting a more realistic result. I recommend trying both ways, though. So for this painting, let's focus on this technique, and then in the next project, we can have a look at doing it the other way. I think this texture looks pretty good, so let's go in with the glasesPicking up the cols one by one, just like before, adjusting the colos depending on what we're seeing in the reference, at least what we interpret seeing. It doesn't have to be accurate and it does not have to be perfect. Oh Once we've got that, there may still be things you want to adjust, but we're going to leave any final touch ups till the end. The final thing we're going to have a look at in this lesson is lifting. So if there are any areas where we want to bring back some lighter tones, depending on the area we can use either our normal brush or our scrub up brush and go in and lift it. So damp or wet brush. We just don't want too much water on it, go in like this and bring out those lighter values. We're gonna allow that to dry and move on to the next lesson. 11. Oranges; Second Layer; Rind: Okay, we've got this beautiful orange pulp, and in some ways you could say it's glowing because of how vibrant and bright it is. But in order to really emphasize and show off that light coming through, we need some darkness as well, something to compare it to. Next up on our list, pushing the values and contrast. If you're having a hard time seeing the values, that's okay. Sometimes it's difficult when there's so much saturation on everything. If we add a black and white filter or turn down the saturation, it may be a bit easier. You can take a picture of your painting as well and do the same thing. I'm not too far off down here. And right here on the brightest portion of the orange part of the rind, I'm also pretty close to the final values I need. But I definitely need to darken the rest, so let's get into it. I've cleaned up my palette but if you have space on your palette, definitely use the left o paint you already have to mix the new color. We're going to start with the white portion of the rind, so we're going to need to mix up at brown. And to do this, we're going to mix some combination of our primaries. I'm going to start with my orange, red and blue and see where it takes me. Don't be scared of color mixing and don't worry about using the exact colors or the exact amounts that I'm using. You don't even have to add orange. You can use just the yellow, red and blue, and it'll be perfectly fine. Right now, my mix is looking too red, so I'm going to add in some more yellow. I could have saved myself that trouble if I just use the yellow instead of the orange, but it doesn't matter. Every road leads to Rome. Or in this case, any combination of our primaries is going to lead to a brown. I'm going to add in some blue to help neutralize it. Something like that. If you're unsure whether or not you've got the right color, swatch it close to the edge of the paper and hold it up to your painting. I think I'm going to add just a touch more blue to my neck, make it slightly more neutral. We're going to wet our paper just like we did in the first layer. This time we don't want the color to go all the way up to the orange pod. So we need to use our brush to help control that edge. I'm gonna wet the paper. Pick up my color and begin adding that in like this. We're going to pull that colour down the side, gradually fading it out, using water to help. We can also drop in a small amount of pigment like this for some texture. It's going to be very subtle, but it still adds something to the painting. And I'm going to add just a thin wash on the other side. Starting up here where I want the most concentration, but still not a lot. And blending that out, as well. We're gonna allow that to dry. In the meantime, we're going to mix up a color for that bit in the center. I'm going to mix my yellow and orange. Something like this and a touch of a brown. It doesn't have to be an exact color match, but we do want some version of a yellow or light orange because the color in this area is caused by that reflected color from the wedge in the front. This is going to be fairly light, so I'm just going to add it wet and dry and blend out the edges. Make sure the other colour or layer has already dried. Otherwise, you may cause blooming. While that dries, we can move on to the wedge in the front. Same thing, wetting the paper. Picking up the color. And then for this one, I'm going to go in with a heavier layer. How heavy or light you want to go is, of course, going to depend on the base you already have. So compare your painting to the reference or a black and white filtered version. I'm still going to leave room for some light glazing on this one, not so much to deepen the values, although that is, of course, a side effect, but mostly to leave room for color adjustments. Sometimes during the course of the painting process, you end up making decisions that you weren't necessarily planning on. And so having that room to make those final adjustments at the end can be really useful. Gonna drop in some colour here as well, just like with the other wedge. Due to the amount of water I have on my paper, this isn't really going to add much texture, but it is going to add some unevenness. And I do really like that. Already, the contrast between that orange pulp and the shadow color on the ring has helped push that orange forward and made it light up so much more. Don't be afraid to push those contrasts. And in fact, for this type of subject, it's better to go a bit too dark than too light. And you know what? Why not? A duck or shadow color or shadow tone is going to give a more dramatic effect. I might as well demonstrate it on this painting. I'm going to add another thin layer to deepen the values a tiny bit more. This time, I'm just going to go in wet and dry to make the process faster. And you could deepen these values even more. The darker you go, the brighter those oranges are going to glow. So it really just depends on what you want the painting to look like. Softening the edges. I love how it brings out and enhances that light. Let's add some more colour to that white portion or membrane near the top of the wedge. I'm going to bring some more yellow and orange into this mix. We're going to use this for the base before going in with the brown and a touch of the brown. You can go in wet and wet. I'm going to go in wet and dry. So I'm going to pick up my colour. Add that in. Rinse and wipe off my brush, soften that edge, and add in the brown mix. We can also bring some of that color down here to get a bit closer to those shadow tones. I know it may feel a bit weird to ruin that bright orange like this, but it's just going to put even more emphasis on how bright the rest of the wedge is. If you dare, we can get some of both mixes and do a thin glaze right here. It's not necessarily going to make much of a difference, but it is going to shut out some more of the light. Moving on to the orange part, we're going to mix up two colours, a bright orange, so I'm going to mix my yellow and orange, mostly yellow, and I'm going to mix it right here. And we'll need a Diba orange. I'm going to mix orange with a touch of the red. You could definitely mix more color variations if you want. But for now, I'm just going to keep it simple. Okay, we're gonna wet the paper. Get that nice even sheen. Pick up our brightest comics, add that in as a base. Wipe out brush? We can use the tissue to get rid of more of the water. Pick up the daga mix, and then we're going to add that along here. Between those two colors, it's okay if some of the pink gets onto the brown portion. Just watch out for any harta just forming. Then as the paper starts to dry, we can bring in some detail. I'm gonna pick up some of my color and then go in and draw small circular shapes like this. It does not have to be perfect, and some of them may soften to the point where you can barely see what it is, but that's okay. Just like that. Then we can move on to the other half and do the same thing. This time keeping the call mixes daga. So we can still start with the base of the do mix, but go in with a more saturated layer like that and then add in the daca details. Once again, these details are not the most important part. They're just sprinkles. They're great to have, and they can add some realism to the painting, but they're not going to make or break a painting the same way values are. So focus on pushing those values and contrasts. I run out of my Diba orange. I'm going to mix up some more and then continue. It's important to note that the details are not the important part. We want to keep an eye on those values. So the deep orange tones, especially on this half, need to be about the same value as the deep brown we added before. Because we are working with Depo values down here, I'm going to mix in some of the brown for those details. Another thing to note is that on the first half, you are okay with some of that orange bleeding onto the brown. But for this half, because it is in shadow, the colors are far more separated. So even if not by much, we want the brown in this area to have a slightly more cool tone. If you do get some color onto the white portion, though, it's okay. We're not going to be that strict. For the wedge in the back, I'm going to go in wet and dry. You can also go in wet and wet. It just depends on your personal preference. We're going to add the bright base, and I'm going to pull some of this colour onto the white portion. We don't necessarily have a lot of texture or detail here, but we do have some slightly deeper values right here, so we go to add those in. Onto the other half, same thing, starting with the bright orange base. Add in the deeper orange. And pull some of that onto the white portion. Just a tiny bit like that. We are definitely approaching the finish line. Let's add the shadows and final touches. 12. Oranges; Shadow & Final Touches: Going to finish up the details and add in the shadows. So first, we need to take an eraser and get rid of the masking fluid. We are going to start with the shadows, but first, let's just fix these two areas right here. They're kind of sticking out like a saw thumb. I'm going to take the brush that I usually use to mix my paints, dip it in my water, and wipe off most of it, and then go in and use it to soften these edges. Just like this. And I'm allowing some of that pigment to bleed into that empty space because we don't need this to be bright white. And here, while softening the edges. I'm also going to use a pigment to fill in the area with a pale colour. And if needed, we can always bring in some more pigment, but for now, I'm going to leave it and come back to it at the end. For this one, however, I do want a tiny bit more colour. So I'm gonna pick up some of the colour from before and add that in. And again, we can always come back to it for a few final touch ups. Let's move on to the shadows. If you've got room on your palette, keep the paint you already have. The shadow color we see in the reference is a pretty proper gray color. And if you want to stick to those colors, definitely mix up a gray. I'm going to mix up a very cool tone gray or more of a muted blue just to have some color contrast. I'm not looking for a particularly vibrant color. First off, shadows are usually less saturated, but also, I don't want anything to compete with those oranges. Mixing together my blue, red and orange. There's no specific ratios or mixing recipes. Just keep adjusting the color until you're happy with it. Your colmix doesn't even have to be close to mine. If you want slightly green or purple shadows, go for it or if you want to stick with the gray, that's perfectly fine, as well. You genuinely cannot go wrong. For the shadows, we're going to go in with two to three layers. For the first layer, we're going to establish where the different colors are and also try and somewhat match the values of the outer portion to where the shadows are the lightest. For the second layer, we want to adjust the values and the colors and get closer to what we want the final shadow to look like. And then if needed, we can go in a third time and make a few final adjustments. We're also going to need some orange for that reflected color we're seeing right here. And even though it's subtle, there is a slight yellow tone right here. If you still have the other mixes on your palette, you can go ahead and mix into those. You can also do the shadows in one layer if you prefer, but I like how gradually building it up allows us to look at what we've already got, assess, and then make decisions from there. We're going to wet out paper. We want an even shine, but we don't want to be too wet because we still want to be able to control the color without too much trouble. We're going to start with our orange, add that right here and pull that color out following the shapes we see in the reference. It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate. Then we can pick up some of our shadow colour. I'm not rinsing my brush. The pigments are going to mix anyway. Add that in. Right in this area, the shadow is daca. So if you do get more pigment here, that's totally fine. Gonna quickly rinse and wipe off my brush, pick up the shadow colour, and add that to the rest of the shadow. Being careful not to introduce more water than what is already on the paper. I'm going to pull some of this color into the orange area. You only want to do this if your paper is wet enough. Otherwise, it's better to wait till the second or even a third layer. All I'm doing is mixing the pigments and getting rid of some of the vibrancy, but you can do this with a glaze as well. Then we can rinse and wipe off our brush and clean up the edges if needed. For the shadow in the front. Same thing. We're going to wet our paper just like before. This time, we're going to start with the Btu mix, add that in right here. Then transition into the orange. I definitely don't have enough mixed up, but we want to follow along here near the bottom. And if you do have more paint mixed up than I do, you can go in with a daga almost saturated layer. Picking up and adding in the shadow color without rinsing the brush. And rinsing and wiping the brush before picking up the shadow colour again. Even though we still need to go in and deepen the shadows, it's already making such a difference to the painting, and it's making those wedges look even more glowy. Once we've got this, we can allow this to fully dry and go in again. For the second layer, I'm only wetting the paper within the lines or within the shadow shape. Now that we've got those initial colors in place, we can use the second layer to adjust both the values and the colors. I'm going to make some of my shadow color into my Diba orange, and you can add in more or less depending on how vibrant you want the colour. There's nothing wrong with exaggerating and making that reflected color more vibrant if you want. Maybe a bit more. That looks pretty good. We're going to start with this. Transition into more of the shadow tone. Even more of the shadow color. And blend out the edges, making sure they're nice and soft. For the shadow in the front, I'm also going to wit the paper where that yellow is because I do want a touch more color here. Gonna add in a bright orange right here and then a Tiba more dirty orange for the rest. And to make it easier, I'm gonna save those final deep values here for a third layer. Rinsing and wiping my brush. Adding in those deep blue or gray values. And blending that out. Something like this. Looking at this, I think I'm going to go in with a third and technically a fourth layer for that shadow in the front. So what I'm going to do is go in wet and dry, deepen some of those values and colors closest to the wedge, allow that to dry, finish up the details on the wedge itself, and then come back with a final wet and wet wash for that shadow. That way, I'll be able to make any final decisions regarding that shadow by comparing it to the wedge itself. Whether you want to do the shadows in one or multiple layers and whether you want to use wet and wet or wet and dry all depends on personal preference. I don't always use the same technique. It depends on the painting. But as with everything else, I recommend trying multiple different techniques. That way, you'll be able to tell what works best for you or what works best for what, depending on the situation. In order to finish up the details, I'm going to bring in some more paint on my palette. And when I say there is no coll mixing recipe, that is not an understatement. I want a variety of oranges, tans, neutrals, so we can pick and choose any coll we need depending on the area we're working on. Uh It's up to you how detailed you want to go. I'm going to look for some of the most obvious differences. But as I've already mentioned, the goal is not hyperrealism. You can make it as loose or as rendered as you want, depending on your preferences. The first thing I'm noticing is the deeper value right here, as well as those small bits from seeds. So I'm going to bring in an orange brown or dirty orange, add that in, and blend it out. And we can paint a super quick impression of that bit right here by adding in a base of some yellowy, dirty orange and adding some deep brown on top. Same right here. Okay, that was maybe a bit too dark. Not a big deal. Gonna quickly lift some of that. And go in with the dark brown. And while we're in this area, let's deepen the values over here as well. Just like that. I'm going to use a deep orange or orangy brown to deepen that rind. Each of these changes, although they may seem small, can make a huge difference. Look for any place or area where you want to make adjustments, and that is in terms of detail, color, or value. The changes you may want to make to your painting may vary from the ones I need to make on my painting. So compare your painting to the reference to see where you may want to go back in or where you want to leave it as is. I don't want to add too much more detail to my painting, for the most part, I'm looking for the areas where I need to darken or deepen the values, like for the rind and shadow. But whatever you do, don't stress about the exact approach, with the exact colours, et cetera. There is no right or wrong. Use this as an opportunity to play around with different techniques. And then if you're interested in future classes, we can have a look at painting a more detailed version as well as playing around with changing the colors. Focus on the main shapes and the main values. Oftentimes, when those are in place, a lot of the details are going to seem less important. I am pretty close to calling this done. Finally, I'm going to go in and do some light lifting. Pick up a few of these highlights. Something like that doesn't have to be perfect. And maybe for a final touch, I'm gonna make some orange with my red, go in wet and dry and add that right here in swift strokes, mimicking those reflections on the surface. I'm gonna leave it as is. If you want, we can move on and paint a wedge of lemon using a similar but slightly different approach. 13. Lemon; Colors & Sketch Prep: We've got an image here that's very similar in style to the oranges. We've got the light coming in from behind our subject, shining through the pulp of flesh, and we can even see some of the background color through it, both because of how thin the wedge is, but also because the pulp, in this case, being a lemon has a lot less colour than an orange. We're not going to create a finished painting of this one because it's too close in style to the one we already painted. But I'm still going to upload the reference for you to use if you do feel like painting it. Instead, we're going to have a look at this one. So how do we show transparency in a wedge of citrus when it's lit from the front rather than the back and we don't have that light coming through. With this wedge, specifically, we do still see some of the background call coming through near the top. So that is definitely one way. But for the most part, it's all those subtle color and value changes within the flesh. These are what inform our eyes that there is a certain depth or thickness to the wedge. And because of the transparency, even if we don't feel like we can see through the wedge near the bottom of that flesh, so in the thickest part, in a way we still can because those calls and the way they look do partly come from the background color. In order to really show the transparency, we need to capture those color changes. Let's take a look at the colors we're going to be using. The color palette for this one is fairly simple. We've got bright yellow. We've got the background color, which is a tone down sky blue. And we've got the deeper yellows, some more warm tone and some more cool toned and more heavily affected by the background color. You can pick any colors you feel would be suitable for this painting. I'm going to use a limited palette of our three primaries. Looking at the color palette from the previous project, the thalo blue yellow shade should work well for this project as well. So I'm going to keep that. We could use either a red or an orange for this one. If I were to use an orange, I would like one which could offer deeper values and also one that is less bright, maybe something closer to the Shminge transparent orange. I do, however, think the inacon red could work. So let's go with that one. Lastly, we need a yellow, which is really the most important color on this painting. Now, you could use a color like permanent yellow light, but I do think it's a bit too warm for this one, at least when looking at the colors in the reference, a color like Imidaz on lemon could be a great option. And if you do have a similar yellow, which is more of a lemon colour, definitely give it a go and try doing some mixes with that. But for the sake of the class, I don't want to pull out too many different colours. I'm going to go back to Imidaz Loon yellow from the initial study. So let's have a look. We have our bright yellow. If we add in a touch of our red and blue, we can get some of those deeper, more neutral looking yellows. For the background, the blue on its own could work. But if we add in a touch of our yellow, we may be able to get a color that's even closer. And, of course, with our red and yellow, we are able to get some warmer, more orange tones as well, should we need it. Once again, I'm going to be providing my sketch in the projects and resources tab if you want to use mine. As always, you're also more than welcome to create your own or trace a reference. Even more so with this sketch compared to the previous one, I recommend lightening the sketch as much as you feel comfortable with because these light yellow colours are not going to cover up much. I'm still going to keep my sketch slightly darker than I normally would to hopefully have it be visible on camera. Once we've got that, we can mask off our highlights. Now, there are a lot of surface highlights on this one, and we don't need to get all of them. We also don't need them to be an exact match to the reference. Get out your masking fluid. What I recommend is first looking for some of the main highlights. So some of the larger ones you see. They don't have to be in the exact same spot, but look at the placement and try to get yours fairly close. And once you've added some of those, it's usually easier to add the rest. Or at least some more. If our goal was to create a hyperrealistic painting, we would want to get these as close to the reference as possible, or we would need to adjust the pattern on the inside to fit these highlights because in all technicality, the way the highlights sit on the surface are directly linked to the texture. But honestly, this painting is not worth losing our sanity over. So let's just add in some highlights similar to what we see in the reference, and we'll be just fine. Once you've got your color palette and your sketch prepped, let's move on and get started with the painting. 14. Lemon; Pulp pt. 1: We're going to paint the segments one by one. We're going to take it from the top, starting with these two. And in this case, we're going to start with the one on the left because it has the least dramatic shift in colors. All of these mixes are going to be pretty similar. We're going to create three, starting with the lightest one. For this one, we're going to need a base of yellow. And because these colors are going to be fairly similar, it may be difficult to describe them properly, but hopefully it's going to help when you see them next to each other. We're going to add in red and blue. Now, we're looking for a slightly green to yellow, so just a touch of blue. But we also don't want the color to be lime green, so we need the red to balance it out. And again, just a touch. And because I know it doesn't take a lot to overpower this yellow, I'm adding tiny amounts at a time. Keep in mind that your pink mixes don't have to be an exact match to my mixes, and they also don't have to be an exact match to the reference. But to see if you're close, you can hold your swatches up to your reference. That may help. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to give you an exact color mixing recipe, but I promise you, as long as you're in the ballpack, it's going to be okay. And just like you heard me say many times if you watch my other classes, the colors are really not that important. Focus on the values. They really do carry most of the weight. So let's watch it. And just for good measure, let's watch the plain yellow as well, just so we can see the difference a bit better. For both the second and third mix, we want to start with a base of yellow as well. Both of them will need to have more red and more blue than the previous mix, but one of them is going to be slightly heavier on the blue, and one of them is going to be slightly heavier on the red or orange tones. We want to end up with one that appears slightly warmer and one that appears slightly more cool. We want to keep making adjustments until we have a color we are happy with. You can also swatch multiple times throughout the mixing process. But no matter what you do, please don't stress when it comes to the colors. I know it can feel important to get those same colors and mixers, but it really isn't You can also use a color R just like we did in the last portrait class I posted. Take a piece of your watercolor paper and cut a small hole in the center and hold that over your reference so you can see a color through it. Comparing the color directly to the watercolor paper rather than comparing it to the rest of the reference photo can make it a lot easier. So these are our three color mixes for those first two segments. Let's get started. We're going to go in wet and wet. With this first layer, we're going to add in our lightest colour as a base and then use the other two mixes to add in the first layer for the texture. We're going to wet out paper and making sure it has enough water because I don't want the paper to dry out too quickly. So we want a good amount of water and a nice even sheen, but we still don't want any pooling on the surface. We're going to add in our base color. This color also represents the lightest values within the segment. And even though we are going to come in with more paint, in for color value that is close to the lightest values we're seeing in the reference photo. Once we've got that, we can pick up our next color. I'm going to start with the WamaOmoGlden mix. All we want to do is fill in those shapes within the flesh with these deeper colors and values. And we don't have to worry that much about the accuracy. Of course, we do want a pattern that is similar. And if you want to follow the pattern exactly as it is, you're more than welcome to. I'm going to keep it very relaxed and use the reference more so as inspiration rather than a heart set rule. On the right side or bottom of the segment, we've got more of those warmer tones, and up near the top, we've got more of the cooler and more blue tones, and those blue or green tones are definitely the most prominent in this segment. So we don't want to come in too strong with that golden mix. You should brush to help control how hard or how soft the edges are. The more water we have on our paper and within our brush and paint mix, the more those shapes are going to soften. We do want some shapes or areas with very soft blends, but we also want some with more fine detail because the combination of the two is what's going to give us depth. Right here where we see more of the background coming through, we're going to drop in some of our pure blue and blend that out. We want it to be subtle, and that is not the personality of theos, so we only need a tiny bit. If needed, we can clean and wipe off our brush using the tissue to help get rid of more of the water and then go in and pull out some highlights, which is going to be the lighter values or the outlines for those shapes we're seeing. Once we're done, we're going to allow that to dry completely. And in the meantime, we can do the same with the segment up here. So we're going to wet out paper add in our base colour. As well as a touch of that blue. Just like that. And then we're going to start adding in some of that texture. If your hand is moving in an awkward direction, you can always turn your paper to help. When we're dropping in the color wet and wet, we want to be aware of the fact that every time we lift our brush, it tends to disperse more pigment at that point. So be careful if you're adding fine details. If you want to add fine lines or maybe give some of these shapes a fine point, start with that and then pull your brush down to a safe place before lifting it. On the other hand, if you want a soft effect, you may want to lift a brush to help the pigment spread, but it all depends on what effect you want and how much water is present on your paper and within your brush. If you're unsure, start light and then build up those deeper values, and you can always go in with more layers as well. So don't stress. Once again, it does not have to be perfect. But if you're not comfortable going straight in like this, either use a pencil to lightly sketch out a few guidelines or create fine lines using watercolor, wet on dry just to get you started. We don't need to capture every single color shift. Look for some of the more prominent ones, so the ones that catch your eye, try to break it down and simplify and just take it one step at a time. Don't rush. While that dries, we can get started with the base for the three remaining segments. I'm going to turn my palette because we'll need to create two color mixes. A 15. Lemon; Pulp pt. 2: I'm going to turn my palette because we'll need to create two color mixes. Both of them are going to start with a base of yellow, and once again, I'm going to do my best to describe them. For the lightest mix, if you mix up a color similar to the lightest color we had before and then add in a touch more of the blue as well as the red, you should be pretty close. We want a similar but slightly deeper color. Though, honestly, you could also use the same type of color, and then at the end, use glazes to adjust it. But really the best help here is to swatch your colors and hold them up to the reference. This is definitely too orange. I'll have to add some blue to adjust it. Sometimes it really only takes a small amount of paint to throw off the entire mix. Luckily, it's not a big deal. We can always find a way to correct it. And even if we completely messed it up, it's not that big of a deal. We could just clean our palette and start over. We are working with fairly small amounts of paint, so even though it is annoying, we're not losing that much material. Mix these colors to the best of your ability. And again, you can use the color re I mentioned in the last lesson. I'll hold your swatches up to the reference. I know the mixing takes a while, but I'm being careful not to speed up too much of the footage because I want you to be able to follow along. The second color is going to be very similar to the golden mix from before. We want it to be just a tad deeper, so a tiny bit more red and a tiny bit more blue. And if you want to bring in some more vibrancy, you can make it less neutral and more orange. Just be careful not to go too bright, because the colours we're seeing are determined by the background color. The main thing to keep in mind for this deeper colomx is that we don't want it to go too green. We do need the blue to balance out the red, but we still want to maintain a certain warmth. These are looking pretty good, so let's try and swatch them. Or if you find it easier to see the colors when they're on the palette, here they are compared to the previous mixes. Let's give it a go. We're going to wit the paper again and go in with our base colour. We've got some pretty light values out towards the side, so we want to try and maintain those. So we're going to pick up our base colour and start adding it in. The pattern or shapes within the segment are a lot more defined. So when adding these in, we may either want to get rid of more water from our brush so that the pigment doesn't spread as much or use lifting just like we did before to bring back some of those highlights or outlines. And of course, we can use a combination of the two. Use whichever technique you prefer or feel the most comfortable with. I think I may want to add some more green tones in this area. So I'm going to say that for the next layer. This may not be classified as the most riveting footage, but I hope you find them as enjoyable to paint as I do. And even though I do tend to mostly paint the wedges where the light is coming through them, it's a lot of fun getting to play with the colours and the texture in a different way. It's just a really nice and relaxing type of project to work on, and they always look so cute when they're done. That looks pretty good. Let's finish up the last two. We're going to go in the same way, wetting our paper, adding in our base color, building up the base for the pattern, and finishing off by lifting or bringing back those lighter values. Work on your own pace and don't stress about perfection. As you can see on my painting, I'm not following the pattern that closely at all. I'm definitely taking inspiration from it and trying to capture some of those similar shapes and details, but I'm being very loose in terms of precision. We don't need to chase perfection, but we do want to chase similarity in the structure. Try and capture similar shapes to what we're seeing in the photo. Pay attention to the most prominent shapes, even if you don't put them in the exact same spot, getting in a similar version is a great place to start. And then once we've got those, we can add in more of the smaller shapes around them. I'm pretty sure you've got the technique by now, so I'm going to speed up some of the footage, and I do want to apologize in advance. Coming up, there are a few clips or places where my camera goes into autofocus. It's only for a few brief moments, so it should be okay. It's one of the most heartbreaking things to see when you're filming. Before going in on this last one, make sure the two next to it have fully dried. We don't want to cause blooming. Can you guess what we're going to do next? That's right. We're gonna wet our paper, pick up our paint mix, add in our base layer, build up the texture, and finish off with some lifting. I really love subjects like this where we don't just get to practice a technique, but also get to go on autopilot. Having to repeat techniques and steps like this makes it an ideal project to work on while listening to podcasts, maybe listening to one of your favorite movies or being a project that you can kind of walk to and from. It's a great project to work on a little at a time if you don't have much time for painting. Once you're ready, let's move on and get started on the background. H. 16. Lemon; Background: We're going to add in the background. We could add it in later, but the reason why I'm choosing to add it in now is that not only is it going to help us see the colours better, especially on that flesh or pulp, but also because if we do get some paint onto the rind, we'll be able to lift it or at least lift it more easily without messing up something we've already painted. For the background color, we're going to start with a base of blue, and we want to mix up a good amount. We don't want to run out halfway through. The thalo blue is more blue than the background color. So we're going to add some yellow to help pull that color into the right area or closer to the color we need. And we're also going to add some red to help balance it out. We don't want it to be too bright because the color in our reference is slightly muted. Let's watch it and see what we've got. Very pretty, but a bit too bright, at least for what I'd like, so I'm going to mix in some more. Oh Okay, I do like this color, but we're getting into goldilock territory. This one is a bit too muted. Kind of makes sense a more blue. Definitely goldilux. This one is just right. We're also going to need a color for the shadow. For this one, I'm just going to mix up a gray. The reason why is because if we add in the shadow first, then once we add in the background, we're going to glaze it with that shadow, making it appear more blue. So I'm going to mix together my red, yellow, and my blue. We want to mix up a gray that is neutral or slightly more cool toned. We just don't want it to be too warm. This looks pretty good. Let's watch it. That should be okay. We're gonna wet our paper, and we want to wet it outside the lines to make sure we get soft edges. Let's pick up our color. Hopefully, I've mixed up enough and add that in. If looking at the reference, the shadow does have a certain unevenness to it. It's not just one solid color. These are the reflections from the pulp of flesh from that light coming through. You don't have to worry about this. You can add just a solid layer of colour. Just for the sake of it, I'm going to try and get down a somewhat messy application to see if that's going to give a similar effect. That could definitely work, but I'm not sure it's worth it for this one. Although these reflections do help show transparency in some way, they're not a hugely important part. So whether you want to add some of this or not is completely up to you. And if you do want to add it, it may be easier using lifting for this after you've allowed it to dry or even at the very end after adding the background color. Once fully dry, we're going to go in again and add in the background. So it's wet the paper, we can use a round brush, but I'm going to go in with a flat brush just to make it easier. This may not be a necessity, but it does help spread the pigment more evenly, especially when working on hot press paper. Take your time and make sure it's evenly wet. This will help ensure a smooth application. So we're going to load up Brush and begin adding it in. I'm going to start up here and work my way down. When adding backgrounds, it's a good idea to have your paper on a slended surface. Whenever I'm not using an easel like right now, I usually prop up my paper and bout on a roll of painter's tape. And so if you're applying your paint working top to bottom, gravity will help you as well as the moisture in the paper and the paint mix is going to go down towards the area you're working on. We're going to allow that to dry. And once you're ready, let's move on and get started with the rind. 17. Lemon; Rind: Once everything has dried, this is what it looks like. My background is a tad more vibrant than the reference, which is okay, but it's also a tad too light. If you're in the same boat, it may be easier to go in with another layer straightaway rather than wait. But I'm gonna wait till we get to the final touches. I do want to go in and deepen the values and the shadow later. But in this lesson, we're going to paint the rind. I sadly didn't have enough room on my palette, so I had to get rid of the background colour. I chose that one specifically because it's the one I spent the least time on mixing. For the white portion of the rind, we're going to mix up a cream colour, so a very pale, slightly yellow of white, which of course means we need to use it with a lot of water. We're going to be working with teeny amounts here, but we want mostly yellow and still with a touch of both red and blue. Now, the difference is going to be minuscule, but according to our reference, it leans slightly more green in color, and not that it's going to make a huge difference, but I'm going to start with a base that is slightly less green and more of a typical cream color. So this is close to the color it's supposed to be slightly more green. I'm going to add in some more red. So this is what I've ended up with. We're going to wet the paper and add this in. If you're following along with my mix, in a few seconds, you'll be able to question your own sanity, because once we've added this in, we're going to add a tiny bit of blue into our mix, bringing it back to that original green tone. We can then add that starting up here where the wedge is the thinneest and we see some of the background shining through. Pull it down the side. And on the other half, I'm going to add it close to where the white of the rind meets the yellow, kind of like an in between color. And, yes, you are allowed to question my level of sanity as well. It's really not gonna make much of a difference. But either way, clean up the edge. Then we're going to allow that to dry and then we're going to come back and paint the yellow pad. Before we can go in with the yellow, we need to clean up any hot edges from that background. If you don't have any, that's great. But if you do, we're going to take a damp brush. I'm going to use a brush I use for mixing my paints. Then we're going to go in lightly scrub at it and blood it dry using the tissue. Continue all the way around the subject or wherever you see those dark hot edges. F the yellow portion, we're going to start with three colomxesO that is pure yellow, so let's get some paint onto our palette. And then for the shadow side, we're going to mix two shades of brown, one that is slightly warmer and one that is more neutral. He Starting with the yellow, we're going to go in wet and dry, and we're going to add a beautifully saturated layer along this edge. And as we're adding that in, we can add a few wobbly bits like this because the edge is not completely straight. Continue down the bottom and up along the other side. Over here, we're going to first add in a base of the yellow. Then add in the lighter brown or the more warm toned brown. Finally, we're going to add in the Deepa more neutral brown. I'm going to add that right here and down towards the bottom. Then let that dry. Once dry, we're going to go in with a second layer, and we're going to start over here on the shadow side. So first, we're going to go in with some more yellow starting at the top. And then as we work our way down, we're going to introduce the lighter brown and then the darker brown. I'll have to be very gentle because I'll most definitely have a lot of lifting when doing this. Lifting will depend on multiple factors. In this case, it's partly due to the way the paint was applied. Knowing that the imidazolon yellow lifts super easily, and then having that as a base layer underneath the brown means that those brown mixes are likely going to lift more easily as well, especially due to how thick I applied that yellow color. If you're experiencing this, using a very light touch can help make the application of the second layer easier. You may even find it easier to go in with some dry brushing. B Next up, we're going to have a look at this bubbly kind of texture within the yellow part of the rind. Over here, we're going to need a deeper yellow. I'm going to go for a slightly warmer tone. And over here, we need a greenish yellow with a touch of red, so it's not too clean. I'm going to start by mixing up the green. Maybe something like this. I'd like it to be slightly more Olivi That's better. It's not too important, though. Onto the yellow mix, starting with a base of yellow, mixing in some red. Adding a touch of blue, maybe a bit more. Something like that. Let's start with the yellow side. Okay, well, first off, I'm going to fill in this bit right here. We don't want to leave that empty. What we're going to do is follow along the edge. We can add some of this yellow to the outer portion of that edge. But mostly what we want to use it for is draw small circles like this. They don't have to be perfect, and we can blend the edge of some of them out, so they merge with that outer edge. We don't want to go too dark. If you accidentally add in too much pigment, just blend it out and lift it and go in again. As we get closer to the bottom, we're going to start introducing some of our green mix into the yellow mix. And then the further we get to the other side, we're going to use mostly green with a touch of the yellow. I actually think my green mix may be a bit too warm. I didn't account for the fact that we have that yellow base. So I'm going to add in some more blue and see if that helps. Yeah, that's definitely better. My apologies for leading you astray. Anyway, we're gonna continue all the way up to the other corner. Once we've got that, the final step for the yellow part is some lifting. If you're using a yellow that doesn't lift as easily as the imidazin yellow, you may want to go in with a more firm brush, but we want to go in and lift some of the lighter base color like this. H. And over on the other side, we're gonna follow along the edge, making it look nice and crisp. We still have a few final touches to add, but for now, let's move on and finish up the pulp. 18. Lemon; Pulp pt. 3: We're getting closer to completing this painting. In this lesson, we're going to finish up the pulp, starting with the three segments in the center. The first thing we're going to do is go in and add additional detail to the pattern or texture within the segments. I've turned my palette so that we're back to the two call mixes we used for these segments, so let's get nice and close. The more orange of the two mixes is a pretty good match to the deeper tones within these segments, but I want to liven it up at Tad mow. I'm going to bring in some more yellow and some more red to give it a slightly brighter orange tone. Not too much, though. This does technically bring the colmix further away from the reference, but we can use the color in combination with the green mix to adjust the colors accordingly to the areas we're working on. So even though the colmi does look quite different from the one before, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make a dramatic difference. It depends on how we use it. You can work wet and wet or wet and dry. It's completely up to you. I'm going to start by going in wet and wet, although I'm only dampening the paper. I feel this is a good way of easing into it, so we don't go in with a hash line right away. Even if our pattern doesn't match up completely with our reference image, we're still going to compare the two, and we're going to use a reference to help inform us where we need deeper values, where we might need more orange or more green and where we want the lighter values. So basically what we're doing is defining the pattern we already created and at the same time looking for things we want to adjust. So the colors and values, as well as add in additional details to the shapes themselves. So maybe some smaller shapes around the larger ones or maybe some fine lines in between some of them. It's up to you how detailed you want to go. It's also important to note that I'm going to be going in with a glaze on top, just like we did with the oranges. And so it's worth considering that any glazes you add on top may affect the colors you already put down, meaning that the colors we're placing now may end up looking more yellow, more orange or more green depending on the glaze we're adding on top. So because Watercolor is a transparent medium, those are some things we need to think of, so we are able to plan ahead in our painting process. For this project and this class, I don't want you to worry too much about that, though. If you do end up with a painting of a lemon that is more yellow or more orange compared to what you were initially planning for, that's fine. It's still gonna look like a lemon. Don't worry. Continue working on this detail for as long as you want. And once again, to save you some time, I am going to speed up a small portion of the footage only because we are repeating the same steps over and over. In some areas, the pattern within my segments on my painting are fairly close to what I see in the reference, and in other areas, less so. And if you've got these areas where your pattern is further away from the reference photo, just invent your own. When we look at these segments, we can see how much variation there is in those shapes. Some of them are shaped like tear drops, and some of them are triangular. Some are almost rectangular, and a few of them are even moon or banana shaped. Adding in a few shapes of our own is not going to ruin the painting. Just have fun with it and make it look however you want. If you add in a line that looks too harsh, go over it with a wet or damp brush to soften it. And if you end up going over some of those values or lines, don't worry. If you want, you can go in straight away and lift some of the pigment to bring them back. But otherwise, wait till the next step where we'll go over exactly that. Hopefully, by now, you can see that even though I haven't copied the reference down to the tiniest detail, when we zoom out, it's still coming together nicely. So, if anything, one of the main lessons you should take away from this is that when painting certain subjects, especially something very organic like food, there's a lot of leeway to make changes or mistakes without anyone noticing. There may be areas of a painting where we need to follow certain structures or rules more intensely, but there will also be areas where we can be more loose with the detail and where the subject is more forgiving. Et's finish up the texture within those two final segments as well. So I'm going to turn my palette again to get back to our three initial color mixes. We're going to do the exact same thing for this one. The main difference is that we want the values to be lighter and for the details to be softer. So you may consider going in wet and wet, or in my case, I'm going to use our glazing layers to help soften some of those details. It all depends on which techniques you prefer. And Remember, when working on these two final sections or segments, we see more of the background color through it. So we want to use more of those greens rather than yellows and oranges. Keep this in mind both when adding the texture, but also when you choose which colors you want to use for the glazes. A Once you're happy with the amount of texture you've added, we can go in and do some lifting. This time, I'm going to use the smaller brush because I want to be able to go in with more precision. What I'm looking for are places where I want to go in and redefine some of those lines. So either ones that were lost when adding the texture or to bring it closer to what I'm seeing in our reference. So maybe I missed out of some of these lines completely when adding those initial layers. In which case, we get a chance to bring in some more of those with this step. When doing this, something to keep in mind is that we are going to go with some glazes, which means that the values we're seeing right now may be affected. This means that we may have to go slightly lighter with these values than what we want the final result to look like. But at the same time, it depends on how transparent, opaque or how thin or thick our glazes are. So there are lots of factors to consider. I don't want you to worry too much about it in this lesson or in this class, but knowing this and keeping this in mind may help even more with future paintings as we know what to expect. Lifting paint in Watercolor is often seen as a way to correct mistakes, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes it may be a crucial part of the painting process. In fact, it's a really useful technique that can be used to create lots of different textures and details. It's not just about erasing. I am going to call it for now. I think it looks pretty good. So let's do some glazes. And remember, we can always come back after and do some more lifting if needed. I'm going to clean up this paint from my palette. I want to give myself some extra room to bring in other colors if I want to go in with pure blue, pure yellow, et cetera. Colors you're going to need for your coless are going to depend on what your painting looks like. So we need to compare our painting to a reference to figure out which colors we want to bring in, whether that would be yellow, orange, blue, red, green, et cetera, or where we want to bring in some of our premixed colo mixes. I'm going to go in wet and dry, but you can also go in wet and wet. Let's give it a go and go straight in. I'm going to start up here, and I'm going to start with our lightest colo mix here. Gonna pull that down here. Maybe even a touch of green. Add in a touch of blue for that background color. Make sure I don't have any hot edges and move on to the next segment. For my painting, a lot of it is going to be all about bringing back some of the yellows because when doing both the initial layers and the later details, the lifting caused me to lose a lot of those initial light washes, which coincidentally was the yellow washes. So I'm bringing those back in. I'm gonna allow this to dry, then reassess and go in with a final glaze. We can see just how much of a difference that made. And up here with that blue shining through, we're really starting to get an impression of this being transparent. But I want to go in with a final layer of a nice clean yellow and some Tipa yellow down here. I'm going to bring some more yellow onto my palette right here. And some red and yellow to brighten up and make this mix slightly more vibrant. Be careful and use a light touch. The more we go in and mess around with these glazes, the more detail we may lose. Of course, we can always bring it back using lifting, but it's gonna save us some time if we don't have to. On the other hand, it's nice knowing that we have that option should we need it. No. Once dry, I'm left with something like this. So let's move on and add the final touches. 19. Lemon; Final Touches & Class Project: We're almost there. Lastly, let's have a look at those final touches. First off, if you know you're not going to go in with any more glazes, go ahead and get rid of the masking fluid. If you want, you can keep it like this. But since these highlights don't match 100% with the ones in our reference and because the ones I've added look more dramatic due to the amount or size, I do want to soften some of them. So I'm going to grab my small brush, wet it, and then go in and lightly scrub at them. By doing this, we're spreading the pigment around them and turning them from a stark white to a soft yellow. Just like that. A I'm also going to scrub down here at these edges. I want it to appear slightly softer, but I'm not looking to make any dramatic changes. Next up, in order to properly see if we need to make any other changes, it may be worth going in and readdressing that background. So if your background is too light as well, we can go in and add another layer. It's not an absolute necessity, though. It's going to help us bring in even more dimension, but it can also work just fine with this lighter background color. I'm only going to focus on deepening the values of the background in this top half section. And so before we move on to that, let's deepen the values of the shadow. For the shadow, you're going to mix up one to two colors. I'm going to mix up a color for the main portion. This is going to be a very muted bluish color, and the exact color is really not that important. Mine is going to be a deeper blue, so slightly more purple than the color it's meant to be according to our reference. But the most important thing is that it is darker than what we've already got and that it's not too saturated in color. I'm also going to mix up some paint for the deepest value, so the ones closest to the witch. And for this, I'm going to mix up more of a deep gray. Et's start with the dark gray. I'm going to go in wet and dry in order to have more control and to be able to get a deeper, more concentrated pink mix a lot more easily. We're going to add that in. I definitely didn't mix up enough, but let's see how far it gets me. And blend out the edges. I may still need to go Dang up, but for now, I'm gonna allow that to dry. Once dry, we can go in again this time with the light of our two mixes, so the main shadow color, I'm going to go in the same way, wet and dry, add my color like this and blend out the edges. While that dries, I'm going to get started on the background colour. So I'm gonna mix into the shadow color. And just like with the first layer, I'm looking for a slightly muted blue, a touch more muted than my initial background layer. And just like with the first layer to help the pigment spread, we're going to wet the paper. Not looking to deepen the background values that much. It's just not as dark as I'd like it to be. Go to pick up my color and go in just like with the first layer. Let's talk about the class project. For the project, I'd love for you to create a watercolor painting of either the orange wedges or this wedge of lemon. And you are, of course, also more than welcome to do both of them. But the goal is to use the techniques from the class to show light or transparency in your subject. For the full details, check out the project description below the class. And like with the first layer as well, once dry, we want to soften the edges. If you're interested, I'd love to post a class going into more detail on doing a fully rendered citrus fruit, including painting the outside texture of the rimed. I'm not going to do much more to this. For now, before going in and adding those final deep values to the shadow. The last thing I want to touch up is the bubbly texture right here, and I want to add the smallest amount of texture right here. I'm going to take advantage of the blue background collim mixed up, add in some yellow, and create a nice, cool, slightly muted green. And I'm going to bring that straight in like this, going over the same texture we already created to deepen the values and adjust the colour. I think that looks a lot better. For some subtle texture on the white portion of the rind, I'm going to wet the paper. Drop in my color like this and use my finger as a stamp to both soften some of it, but also use it literally as a stamp. So by touching the wet paint, we're coping it onto our finger and redistributing it onto other areas, copying those dots. And finally, the shadow. I've mixed up a deep gray or a really deep neutral. I'm gonna go in just like before wet and dry, pick up my car, add it in, and blend out the edges. And that's it. I really hope you enjoyed this class, and I cannot wait to see what you create. Thank you so much for sticking with me.