Apples watercolour process

There were a couple of things that I was thinking about when doing this painting - the first being: "Don't over think this". Followed by, try to paint this as fast as you can. Sometimes by painting things in a faster way, it forces you to loosen up your technique. It also gets you to be faster at analyzing the reference.

I ended up setting up my phone to video this process as a bit of pressure on me to work faster. I've posted the video on my Instagram reels. I managed to compress a 2 hour painting into about 10 minutes. Minimal editing and cuts.

Reference picture of Apples

Here is the reference image that I took. My aunt gave me about 40 lbs of apples last fall - and they are the most amazing apples that make the most amazing applesauce. Looking back to this image - I did end up going quite a bit darker with the painting, but I was really enjoying the colours, so decided to go for it.

The first step for me are the undertones which in this case are yellows. But you can see in the reference that there are some warmer yellows in the front, and cooler yellows tot he outside, and some muddy green on the right of both apples.

This is the first layer of colours that were done in a wet-on-wet fashion. I recently bought the Escoda Chronos brushes (sizes 1,2,4,6,10). They are a hybrid brush between synthetic and sable. I mostly ended up using the size 10 brush for this painting. It gave me a super sharp tip and it laid the paint down really well, but I found that when I wanted to mop up the paints, that it fell short. It wouldn't lift the paint up very well, so I ended up using my Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable brush. The biggest one I have is a size 7, and it was ungodly expensive, but it really is the most incredible brush. It's now lost its fine point, but it is a beautiful brush and will keep on using for as long as absolutely possible.

I'm seeing more and more that the Winsor & Newton brushes aren't very available in North America. I may have to save up my pennies and pick up a back up from my local art store here. Currently $135CAD, yikes.

Back to the apples, you can see that there are about 4 colours that I started with here. They are:

• Schmincke 222 Light Yellow Lemon (semi transparent)

• Schmincke 212 Chrome Yellow Light (transparent)

• Schmincke 537 Transparent Green Gold (transparent)

• QOR Green Gold (transparent)

I applied a layer of water, added my colours, and then pulled the colour out where need be as well. The shadow never goes all the way to the edge when you're painting something spherical that has a reflective surface, so you want to make sure there's some light that shines through.

The next colour was Winsor Newton Cadmium-Free Scarlett (opaque). A colour that could punch in some of those reddy-orange tones, but I made sure that there was little or none of that paint where I wanted some cooler tones to go. I didn't want them to fight, rather they both needed their own zones.

I recently picked up the most fabulous red, and thankfully so because it was the main red for the body of the apples. You can never have too many paints, right? Winsor Newton Permanent Carmine (transparent) - a formidable red, a bit more on the cooler side of the spectrum, but definitely the best colour for this application. You can see in the image that I left a hairline gap of light between the two apples. In reality, that isn't there but in paintings, it helps to discern one object from the other.

I will group a few steps together here. In this image, you can see a number of changes. There's a little more green around the tops where the stems were and a little bit on the rear apple on the right hand side - Schmincke 524 May Green (semi-transparent). Some Winsor Newton Raw Umber (transparent) to muddy those areas up a bit as well.

I started to realize that the cool hilights for these apples needed to be in the magenta tones, and not red at all. In the top left hilight sections, I used Winsor Newton Opera Rose (semi-transparent) and the darker tones are Winsor Newton Quinacridone Magenta (Transparent). The Quin magenta actually ended up being one of my main shadow colours for the apples and the details. It ended up being a bit too dark/cool on the rear apples, so I went back in with the Permanent Carmine to red it up again.

For this painting, I definitely worked with two brushes at the same time - for the most part, the Escoda brushes to lay in the colours and the Winsor Newton Series 7 brushes to move and lift the paint.

At the end I ended up introducing two more shadow colours: Daniel Smith Quinacridone Violet (transparent) and Winsor Newton Windsor Violet (transparent). I realized that since my painting had so much contrast, that to show some of the shadow areas, I had to go darker still. One great thing about this process of recapping the painting process is that I am now seeing that I should have darkened the lower centre area of the back apple (is a painting really truly ever finished?). I may go back to that... I'll have to see just how much my brain obsesses over it first. The other thing that I learned was that sometimes it's hard to tell what colour to use in the shadows - like on the right side of the rear apple. It's a muddy colour and I wasn't too sure what to use. My initial thought was to use Raw Umber, but I ended up with some of the Quin Violet, but more thinned out at first, and then built it up. That was the colour it needed. The purple tones play with the yellows and dance with your eyes.

Once I got to this point, I saw that there was a need for a little more bright and punchy red, so I used Winsor Newton Transparent Orange (transparent) to punch up those warm areas. That, to me really made the painting. It plays off really nicely off of the punchy pink of the Opera Rose and brings your eye around the contours.

Lastly, the cast shadow. Daniel Smith Paynes Blue Grey (semi transparent). I can assure you this was actually the most nerve-wracking part of the whole painting. The free-form and delicateness of it had me screaming in terror as I was putting the paint down as it's always a one-shot deal with watercolours. But it worked out quite well. I didn't want to overdo the colours or the intensity, and I think it worked out just fine.

I think I may want to do this painting again, but just a single apple and challenge myself to paint it faster, looser still. Likely with less layers to keep it "painty" and gestural.

But this is certainly a keeper. I'll be scanning it and plan on making prints of it for the summer art markets.

Thanks for reading.

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