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| I worked on this a little more in class adding darks and lifting highlights I worked on the stem and the main leaf near the top. I also did a tree branch in the upper left (blown with a straw) and plan to add some of these to the background. |
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| This is a photo of the set-up I used at home to draw the grapes. I like to have them on a white surface (paper towels here) so that I can see the shadows. I like one light source so I either use a lamp to create the single strong light source or I sit next to a bright window to get the single light source. |
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| One of the blind contours. The purpose of a blind contour is as a warm up and to focus the artist, to get them to really look at and SEE the subject they are drawing. |
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| Thumbnail sketches. These are used to try various compositions, shapes, values, etc. before doing the final drawing. |
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| This is a sketch, a slightly more finished sketch than a thumbnail. I did this sketch so that I could see the positive and negative shapes and the composition I had chosen a little better. |
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| Black and white reference photo of my fruit still life. I worked on the sketches and drawing from the grapes sitting in my studio. I took the reference photo because fruit deteriorates or can get moved (or eaten). I used the photo to work on the grapes in class as I did not have this set-up in class. Reference photos are good to have. |
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| Colored reference photo of my fruit still life. |
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| Finished drawing transferred to watercolor paper (my original drawings are most often done on tracing paper and transferred). |
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| The painting. I started by using flat and graded washes of the pink color. It is the under painting. I then did a darker purple red color (as seen on the bottom left grape). The grape on the top left has an additional glaze of cool red near the back 3/4s and a warm yellow near where the stem attaches. I did a dark purple at the stem of the top left grape and shaded the stem with the dark purple to make it look round. After that was dry I did a glaze of yellow (to make it look brown). I added the shadow on the bottom right with the dark purple and some blue. I then made it look fuzzy by pulling it out and adding a little water around the edge. For demonstration purposes I left the painting in various states of completion. When I am not doing demonstrations for class I work on the entire painting as a whole bringing it up to completion as a unit. |
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| Flat wash on the left graded wash on the right. I worked wet on dry. |
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| Flat wash on the left graded wash on the right. I worked wet on dry. |