Watercolor Lesson One

How to paint an apple

1. Set up the apples on a table. Sit there  and look very carefully at the colors in the shadows and think about the shapes and the forms.

2. Do a very light pencil outline sketch, using lines to separate the light part from the dark part and the shadow part. As you can see, the view from my angle was a little bit different from the view of the camera.

3. Use a little paint with a lot of water to outline the hight lights if you don't want to use the masking fluid. Use clean water to soften the edges while the paint is still wet.

4. Using a little bit of very light paint mixed with a lot of water, paint the whole picture, but leave the hight light alone. I used a #18 brush for the entire painting. The bad thing about using a big brush is that it takes a lot of paint. Add some yellow and yellow green in the red your just painted when it is still very wet in those areas. You see yellow and yellow green in the apple on the table.

5. Use a hair dryer to dry the picture to save time.

6. When the painting is totally dry, paint another layer over the apples. The colors need to have a little more paint in it than the previous layer, but still contain a lot of water. Paint both light part and dark part at the same time. Mix more paint and add some blue for the dark side of the apple. Then using a clean brush, try to lift the reflections on the apples.

7. When the layer is totally dry, mix more blue in the red that you used to paint the apple and paint over the reflection area that you just lifted the paint out.

Now, paint the shadow on the table. Use a blue color mixed with a lot of water, add a little red that you have used, and a little burnt sienna in the blue to paint the shadow. Then immediately drop some yellow and red in the shadow area that you just painted. Make sure the yellow paint and red paint have the same consistency with the blue mix.

Add details on the light part of the apple.

8. Paint the shadow between the apples and the cast shadows on the table.

9. Paint the second layer of the background, make it darker, so the apples can stand out. Add lines for the table.

Ok, done!