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Orange U Glad It’s Tea Time ! |
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Tutorial |
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by Joy Skinner |
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Here is a copy of the line drawing I used for this painting. If you right click on it, you should be allowed to save it as a jpeg. From there you can print and trace it using a pencil and tracing paper. It’s not a hard one to draw though, and doesn’t have to be exact. It would be good practice to draw it freehand. A trick for drawing symmetrical objects … |
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A few words about the composition … I chose to paint 7 oranges. When setting up a composition like this one it is important to have an odd number of objects. I could have painted 3 or 5 oranges, but chose 7 because I wanted to have them positioned in a few different ways—some cut up, some with the stem on top, and others just plain. I also have all objects in this painting touching another object. This gives the viewer “pathways” in which their eye will hopefully naturally travel. When you’re drawing the orange that is cut up, don’t forget to draw the seeds. They will add interest to your otherwise predictable orange segment shapes. We don’t want our painting to be predictable. |
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Step 1—Masking Fluid The first thing I did was use masking fluid to mask out areas where I wanted to save the white paper. I masked out the top of the table on the right hand side of the painting and the top orange. The background is going to be messy to paint and I don’t want that to creep into the rest of the painting. I like using a product called “Drawing Gum” from Cheap Joe’s as a masking fluid because it is colored and you can clearly see where you’ve used it. |
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Step 2—The Background Start with the yellow background. Don’t be particular about how you do this—I have some up and down streaks where the hue is more intense than others. I started to layer the color into the oranges at this stage also. When you are doing this, don’t forget to save some of the white paper where the light is hitting the oranges. You can save these areas using masking fluid as well if you think you need to. If this is how you choose to do it, I would go back in at the end and smooth out most of the hard lines. |
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Cut a piece of hospital gauze to fit in the area where you see the dark background. Hospital gauze works best as it is cotton and will absorb the paint. Cut a large enough piece of the gauze so you can scrunch it up a little. With a large brush, wet the area of the dark background and set the gauze in place. Scrunching it a little bit will add interest to the end result. I used Prussian blue pigment and painted on top of the gauze. Use LOTS of paint and drop more paint into some areas than others. While you have the brush filled with Prussian blue, add streaks to the yellow side of the background keeping it damp so as not to create hard lines. Let the background dry now. It’s ok to use a hair blower to dry the background—Just make sure you don’t have it pointed on the masked areas because it will “cook” the masking fluid to the paper. |
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Step 3—Shading If the background is COMPLETELY dry, you can lift off the gauze. You’ll be left with a very interesting “curtain like” background. The yellow paint will show where the fibers of the gauze hit the paper. This happens because the gauze soaks up the Prussian paint. I started painting some of the shade areas on my painting where the light wasn’t going to directly hit. The light is hitting my oranges and the jug from the left hand side so I want to start shading the areas underneath the right hand side of the oranges, as well as the inside of the jug. I used a light tint of indigo inside the jug to add value. On the underside of the oranges, I used a bit of cadmium red, and alizarin crimson. |
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Step 4—Layering Color I wanted to have some of the yellow background reflected through the jug so added some yellow tint to the upper part of the jug. I made the top part of the liquid an orange tint, and I continued to layer indigo into the jug. Using the masking fluid, mask out the seeds in the orange. Using about a #2 brush, draw lines of clear water through each segment of the cut up orange, one segment at a time. Take care to leave white areas between segments. Fill your brush up with color, and drop the color into the wetted area. First yellow and then orange—a little bit of red for interest. Let the colors mingle. Don’t overwork. Add some green shading to the under areas of the orange. |
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Step 5—Finish your painting Finish up by adding layers of shading to the oranges and the shadowed areas of your painting. Layer upon layer, taking care to let dry in-between. Add detail to the middle of the cut orange. I used hooker green and alizarin crimson to create the really dark colors around the core and the seeds. Lift the masking—you can either use your finger or a soft eraser works well. Magic rub erasers tend to do less damage to the paper. Smooth out any areas that you don’t want hard lines with a damp brush. Don’t overwork your painting—less is almost always best :) I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself :) |
