Tutorial N°10 : How to paint still-life "The mandarins".

Material:

Arches watercolor paper (grain fin). watercolours Winsor and Newton: Aureolin, orange Winsor, French ultramarine, and indigo. Two brushes: squirrel (Raphael 3/0), one little sable brush (Raphael 1 kolinsky ) for detail, masking fluid (to be filed with a shaper brush), palette to prepare colors, grey pencil HB, 2 cups of water clear: one to wet the paper always very clean and rinse the brushes; paper towel.

1.I quickly painted a small watercolour sketch.

2. Drawing for the watercolour.

3. I put the masking fluid (green color on the drawing) on the fruit in the areas of lights on the left and on the edges of the leaves in order to leave a blank line that delimit the outline of the leaves. I have also put it on the stamens on the Orange Blossom. Let dry.

4. For the mandarins, I applied a wash wet-in-wet (Wet-in-wet refers to adding wet colour onto still-wet paint. This allows the colours to bleed and blend together. Yous need to work fairly quickly to ensure the paint on the surface does not have any time to dry before to apply the next colours). I use yellow and orange.

5. I Added Alizarin Crimson in the shadow areas.

6. I painted the background with French Ultramarine on the wetting paper. Top-right, I've added yellow.

7. I painted leaves with light green (A mixture of very few indigo and yellow), medium tint (mix these colours with the same proportions) and finally dark by adding more indigo.

8. Remove the masking fluid, and strengthen all the shadows with different green for the leaves. Draw the flower with a mixture of blue and alizarin grimson.

Enjoy your painting!