Feeling fruity

What can you paint when faced with a messy week? 

Botanical art requires time, and flowers are notoriously impatient, dropping their petals like divas if you keep them waiting a moment too long. A good solution is to paint a collection of small things- subjects that can be painted in a short amount of time ... an hour here, a few hours there ... until you have filled the page.

"Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen."  Paul Cézanne

Summer fruits are delicious to eat, and just as yummy to paint. They are readily available, and come in a wide variety of shapes, colours and textures.  My only problem was that I have a habit of eating them before I have finished! Although I like painting fruit, I haven’t painted any of these before (apart from a very bad strawberry a long time ago). So each little fruit was a fresh challenge. 

It was, as Winsor Churchill said, like taking ‘a joy ride in a paint box’.

I started with the blackberries- lovely little subjects but so fiddly! Here it is after the initial washes of Cerulean, Cobalt violet and teeny bit of Paynes Grey.

Colours used are: Cerulean, Cobalt violet, Paynes Grey, Permanent Blue Violet (Rembrandt)+Viridian and a tiny bit of Perylene Maroon (Note: all my colours are Winsor & Newton, unless otherwise stated)

The blueberries had a similar palette, although I added Cobalt blue to the mixes, and a tiny bit of Cobalt Teal (Daniel Smith) in the initial washes for the reflected lights. I loved painting blueberries.

I didn't enjoy the raspberries. They taste delicious but are so difficult to paint. Initially I planned to paint more, but grew so disheartened with the results that I decided to eat the rest instead. Botanical revenge!

Colours used are: Perm rose, Ruby red (Schmincke), Alizarin, Quinacridone Red, Pink Madder (Fragonard), Dark red (Schmincke), Dark Red+ Perylene Violet

I now have a new respect for those artists who paint strawberries so beautifully, because they are also not easy to paint. The palette was similar to that of the raspberries, but with the addition of Winsor Orange Red.

 Rather than paint carefully around each tiny seed, I decided to take the easier route and used masking fluid applied with the tip of a cocktail stick.

 That worked quite well- I removed the masking fluid after the first few washes of paint, although you need to make sure that the paper is completely dry first or you can damage the surface. Even so,  I still had to painstakingly paint around each blob to create the illusion of an embedded seed. Thankfully it smelled divine and tasted even better, so my grumblings were soon forgotten.

I used the same palette for the redcurrants. They have a lovely shiny surface and a wonderful translucency, just like precious stones.

The kiwi was surprisingly straightforward, once I had worked out the colours.

The fresh kiwi slices were laid onto a piece of plastic to protect the paper underneath. 

Slowly building up the colour

 I started with Naples Yellow for the center, and then settled on a mix of Winsor Yellow Deep, Cobalt and Oxide of Chromium. I know that many artists steer clear of Oxide of Chromium because of it’s opacity… but sometimes opaque colours can work really well (I can hear the shouts of protest from here!). Besides, this is a bit of fun. I’m experimenting! The seeds were done in Paynes Grey.

Funnily enough, I was most daunted by the banana slices. However once I had figured out the colours, they were fairly straightforward. I used Buff Titanium (Daniel Smith), Naples, Naples+Cobalt Violet, Raw Sienna, Cerulean+Cobalt violet.  I can see myself having another go at painting a banana, just to get it right.

Summer fruits by Shevaun Doherty 2014

So there you go… a messy week, but I still managed to get a small painting done, and had plenty of healthy snacks to keep me going along the way!

"Above all keep your colours fresh!"  Edouard Manet

Orange Appeal

 The weather this week has been dark and dismal. Even as I write this, the rain is a relentless drumbeat against my window pane accompanied by a howling biting wind, and it's set to continue. However, I really don't mind. I've a delightful dwarf citrus tree, the Calamondin orange tree (× Citrofortunella microcarpa) sitting in my studio. It's sunshine in a pot.

As Frank Sinatra said  “Orange is the happiest colour.”

I knew as soon as I saw this plant that it would be perfect for my final SBA painting. I wanted something that would work well with the other paintings that I am submitting, and this lovely little shrub with  it’s dark glossy leaves and tiny orange fruit was just the right colour, subject and size. 

So on to that crucial "Getting to know you" stage. I cleaned off my palettes and pulled out all my pencils, paper, colour charts and paints and began my studies.

I soon realised that the light, or lack of it was going to be a problem. In order to show my fruit off to it’s best, I really needed strong lighting. The light also has to be constant- it’s impossible to start in natural light and then switch to an artificial one, as the colours and shadows change too much. So given the rather bleak weather forecast (rain, rain and yet more rain), I decided that artificial lighting was my safest option.

I found a fantastic little magnifying light in Argos (LightCraft Compact Craft Light) -  the magnifier is great and the light is extremely bright and gives off no heat (so no wilting plants). It has a flexible head and best of all, it’s great value for money!

The little oranges proved a little trickier than I thought. Those dimples were challenging but essential to the texture. I tried out different techniques to see which would work best- first carefully painting around the dimples, then applying masking fluid with a toothpick, and finally adding in tiny dots of white gouache at the end. I plan to paint this on vellum so will probably opt to just paint carefully around the dimples and pick out the highlights with the tip of a scalpel.

Different techniques give different results- the two at the top (left)  were done using masking fluid, the two beneath had white gouache added at the end, whilst the ones on the right were just painted carefully.

The colours that I mainly used were indian yellow, winsor orange, winsor orange-red, pink madder (Pebeo), quin red, scarlet lake, purple lake, and of course the wonderful cobalt violet… the ideal colour for reflected light on fruit.

So many greens, but which is the right one?

The leaves were a struggle. They are dark blue on the top and a yellowy green on underneath, but I still haven’t yet figured out the right colour mix!  I used Indigo and aureolin (with a little perylene green, cerulean and green gold) in the tiny study at the top, but Indigo is a staining colour, and so not very cooperative if you make a mistake or go to dark.  A weekend of colour mixing lies ahead and then the real fun can begin. 

Next week I'll paint to the music of the rain.

Making it Work

How wonderful it is to return once more to the routine of my studio after the break! 

Iris foetidissima seeds on vellum... almost there!

 Alas, my Iris foetidissima seed heads didn’t  fare too well in my absence. The lovely orange seeds have lost much their plump juiciness, the crispy husks have darkened, and the leaves are really only fit for the compost heap. Fortunately I took a few photographs at the start of my set up, and so the painting continues using both the sad looking iris and the photographs. However I am pleased with how the painting is progressing.

ALWAYS take a photograph at the beginning of a painting!

Photographs are undeniably a great resource and so useful as a back up, but they can never be a substitute for the real thing. I much prefer to work from life. You can see and understand so much more from your subject when it’s sitting in front of you.

Using Artistic Licence to Make it Work

Very often you will find that the only way to paint a plant is to use a several different specimens of your chosen plant and combine them.  One plant might have a fantastic flower, but no buds, another might have some really super leaves but no flowers. Or, as in the case with my Iris seed heads, the seeds are still there (just about) but the foliage is completely beyond rescue! Photographs are useful, but they won't help you in this. It's much better to have a selection of plants in front of you and to use a little bit of  artistic licence to create the perfect specimen.

Ceiba speciosa, Silk floss tree 2010

The Ceiba speciosa painting above was one where I had to use a lot of artistic licence to make it work. It’s a beautiful flowering tree that grows everywhere in Egypt. Unfortunately as soon as it flowers, it begins to lose it’s leaves, and I really wanted to show both the leaves and the flowers in this painting. 

A Ceiba flower in Egypt and some dying leaves

 At the time that I was painting this, Egypt was having a mini heatwave, and everything that I picked was wilting within a few hours. It was a nightmare! I managed to find a tree that had both it’s leaves and it’s flowers, and every day I set out early to get fresh cuttings. I started by drawing out the main stem, noting where the leaves and flowers should be, and then it was just a matter of trying to find a similar plant part each day to match up. 

Flower by flower, leaf by leaf, I completed this painting. Photographs would not have done because this perfect specimen only existed in my head.

So back to my iris… I am almost finished (at last!!) The photographic references have helped me with the berries, but I am going to have to seek out some fresher foliage this weekend and try to select leaves that will add elegance and interest to the composition. Sometimes you have to take a few liberties to make it work!

"Even in front of nature one must compose." Edgar Degas