STILL LIFE continued....

Painted the brush handle with neutral tint.  Since the handle itself is black, it's ok to use black to paint it.  Sometimes watercolorists think you should never use black, but depending on the lighting situation, choosing black can be the right choice..  There is warm lighting in this painting and I chose to add yellow ochre dropped into the black handle.....I still need to warm it up a bit more.  I lifted the middle shine with a wet brush and blotting the excess off.  I could have used ivory black which is a warmer black .....but I couldn't find it!  So, adding a warm color solves that!  The watercolor pad has some interesting colors.  The green around the edges I painted with cobalt teal and ultramarine with azo yellow in the shaded areas and in the light areas I used the same colors but with more yellow in it.  The shaded area has more blue in it.  I will continue in another post.

PAINTING PEARS

I'm sorry I didn't photograph the the start of this painting.....I got so involved with it that I plum forgot!  Or I pear forgot!  Well anyway, I started with the pears.  There is one pear that is a little different in color, more yellow.  The ones that are more green I started with a light green glaze of sap  green and winsor yellow, or azo yellow in M. Graham paints.  I darkened them in the shadowed areas by dropping in cobalt blue.  I mixed in some perm. alizarin at times to dull down the color a bit.  Then the more yellow pear I mixed azo yellow with a little alizarin and glazed with that.  You can use cadmium red instead of alizarin also.I added green where I saw it and more red where I saw it on the left side.  I used burnt sienna to put in the nicks and spots.  I spattered a bit with it also, being careful to cover the other areas of the painting with paper towels torn up to fit around the pears.  I spattered when the pears were wet and also when they dried.  I also dappled them with a very light paint with my brush to put in added texture.  The colors I used were just slightly darker then the areas I dappled.

Then I did the background.  I painted wet on wet with a mix of maroon perylene and hookers green or you can use sap green.  It makes a blackish muddy green color when the maroon perylene is added.

Then I painted the bowl.  I used cobalt teal mixed with a little ultramarine blue and painted that in the light areas on the right and left sides and then filled in the rest of the bowl with that same color with burnt sienna added to it.  It should make a deeper dark blue.  That's it so far...more later.

Photo Of Pears

                                                  I'm starting a painting of this still life.

FINISHED LILY OF THE NILE