Paint with me: How to paint clementines in 10 easy steps!

Clementines are so tasty this time of year, I wanted to paint some.  Peanut loves them so much she made an I Love Cuties sticker book.  The synopsis on the back cover reads "In this book I will tell  you how much I love Cuties by colecting the stickers on each page.  There will be a difrent kind of stickers from a Cutie."  She's a little cutie herself!  Although she could work on spelling and grammar... 

I planned on painting a large bowl of clementines, but we ate too many for that, so I adjusted my composition a little.  I entitled it "Outcast" and I'm sure you can see why...  poor little clementine on the left!

Outcast 8 x 10

I'll show you how it's done in just 10 steps. Grab your supplies and paint along with me!  Don't forget to post your finished painting...  I'd love to see it!

First of all, I set up my still life.  Don't you just love how professional it is!  I uses boxes, baskets, or whatever to get the still life to the height that I want.  So classy!  I usually prefer my subject close to eye level, rather than looking up or down at it.  Also, make sure you set your easel up so that your canvas is eye level, regardless of whether you are look up, down or straight at your subject.

The above photo on the left is my setup before turning on my spotlight and the one on the right is with my spotlight on.  You can see just how much light is coming in my little "window" that I cut into the box.  The clementines look much more vibrant and the light really brings out their form and the reflections on the table.  Much better!  My painting isn't exactly from this angle, but it's close.

Again, this is the pallet that I use.  In the steps below, the "dark mixture" is a mixture of half Ultramarine Blue and half Burnt Umber.

In a prior post - Paint with me:  How to paint a pear in 10 easy steps - I described the sames steps, but it more detail.  Check out that post if you would like additional information about any of the steps.

Click here for Paint With Me - Pears!

Step one:  The Basic Shape

This is just your basic geometric shape painted with your dark mixture, thinned with odorless mineral spirits or whatever you're using for cleaning brushes.  Again, this step is so quick that you might be tempted to skip it, but it's very important.  For this painting, I initially pulled out an 11" x 14" canvas.  I realized after painting the basic geometric shape that the clementines would need to be the size of oranges or I'd have too much negative space.  I wanted them to be clementine-sized, so I switched to an 8"x10" canvas.  Making changes before you really even get started saves you time - and who couldn't use more time!

Step 2:  Draw the Shadow Areas

Using your thinned dark mixture, paint the shadow areas with straight strokes.  Even though my clementines are round, they're going to look like a part of an octagon here.  You are painting the shadow side of your subject, too, not just the shadows that they cast on the table.  You can see on the right that I got carried away and went on to Step 3 before I could snap a photo.  Oops!

Step 3:  Paint the Shadow Areas

Paint your shadow area with cadmium colors added to the dark mixture.    I used Cadmium Red Medium.  The canvas in these areas should be more smooth, so use just enough paint for the white canvas not to show through.

Step 4:  The Background

Paint your background with black, white and whatever background colors you want.  I chose to add ultramarine blue and I usually add a little raw umber to warm it up a bit.  Crisp edges around your subject will make it look cut out, so keep the edges soft and loose.  You want some of your background color to get into your subject and vice versa.  Check out the clementine on the top...  I got quite a bit of blue in there and that's okay.  I blend my background just enough to look right to me...  still loose enough to give you the sense of atmosphere.  The only time I use a flat background of just one color is if the background is black.

Step 5:  The Light Areas

Paint the light areas, loading up the brush for texture.  You can see that the most textured area is toward the center of the light area, getting smoother toward the edges of the light area.  I used Indian Yellow and Cadmium Yellow for my lights.

Step 6:  Reflected Light

Add reflected light, which is light bouncing back onto the shadow side of your subject.  The reflected light is pointed out below.  You can see that there really isn't much of it.  (My colors are a little wonky in this photo.  Sorry!)

Step 7:  The Midrange

Now add the midrange (areas between the lights and darks), using brighter, more saturated colors just a bit darker than your light areas.  I love this step, because then the canvas is now completely covered and you can start to hone in on some of those delicious details!

I'm sure you've noticed that more than the midrange changed here.  Once I put in my midrange my clementines were looking much too yellow and most of my shadow areas were too dark.  I lightened the shadow areas and added a bit more "orange" (cadmium red and yellow).  I also worked on the reflections on the table.

Steps 8 & 9:  Cast Shadows and Highlights

Add the cast shadows using your dark mixture, lightening them as you move away from your subject. Paint highlights using a brush loaded with white and/or Indian yellow, gently placing thick paint. Don't blend the highlights!  I always think they look so goofy close up, as you can see in my enlarged photos below.  Remember to take a few steps back and see how they look.

Step 10:  Details

The last (and most fun!) step is adding the details.  Details include -

•  Adding anything that hasn't been painted yet -  I added the stem to the clementine on the left.  

•  Darkening some areas and lightening others to better focus on subject -   I usually darken the outside edges of my shelf so your eyes don't wander off the canvas, but instead go toward the subject.  If the light is coming from the left (I almost always have it coming from this direction.  It just feels better to the OCD part of me!), I usually darken the bottom left and upper right of the background.  I do the opposite with light coming from the right.  I didn't choose to direct the light in the background of this painting, which gives it a softer look and is also why the dark areas I initially painted just didn't look right.

•  Throwing subject colors into background - Here I added some cadmium yellow in various places in the background.  You can best see this in my finished painting way over on the right hand side.

•  Adding "halos" around your subjects -  These are added to the light side of your subject.  I went a little halo crazy and added them to 3 of the 5 clementines.  Sometimes there is only one halo.  It just depends on how I feel about them that day.  I feel like they give a little life to the subject.

• Crisping up some edges and blending out others to create lost edges - I smeared out little bits of my cast shadows with a scrubby, dry brush to create lost edges.  This gives you the sense that the clementines are connected to the table and to each other.

Here is a closeup of the clementine on the left (poor outcast!).  You can clearly see the highlight, halo and lost edge.  I hope you enjoyed painting with me!

Merry Christmas!

This red ornament is on of my favorites - other than the ones the kids made, of course.  It's glass and I love the way it captures the light, which is what I wanted to capture here.

Happy holidays everyone!

Oil Painting Portrait Update - Peanut is finished!

I finished my portrait of "Peanut" by doing a little bit of detail work and finishing her hand.  I kept the hand and shirt rather sketchy and put the most detail into her beautiful eyes.  It looks just like her - before she had most of her hair cut off, that is!

Background check...

How much does the background matter?  I decided to find out by painting 3 similar paintings (yes, I love painting pears!) with different background colors.  The background colors I chose were green, red and gray. 

The guys in my family chose the green background as their favorite, while the girls chose the gray.  I think the gray (why do some people spell it grey?) background really makes the pear pop.  Poor red got no votes! What's your favorite?

Paint a portrait in a day?

The portrait of the dancer and violinist below took a few months and caused a minor crisis in our home.  My family endured numerous dinners of frozen pizza, a house in shambles, and clean clothing shortage.  I'm proud to say they managed to persevere through these first world problems and even rose to the occasion!  As I got closer to my deadline, summer break began and I was painting 10 or 12 hours a day.  "The Oldest" was so helpful, making lunches for her siblings and for me.  That way, I could just stop painting for 5 minutes to shovel the food in.  (Asking her to feed the lunch to me while I painted seemed a bit extreme.)  After months of "hardship", the painting was finally finished and everyone lived happily ever after.  That is, until I take on my next portrait!

For our nutritional health and mental well-being,  I decided to try a new technique to portrait painting.

I usually start by painting a full underpainting, complete with all the details.  As you can see below, it just looks like a sepia version of my finished product, even including the violinist's bracelet and the sequins on the dancer's dress.  Color is then added, transparent in some places and opaque in others. Finally, I touch on the little details again and I'm finished!

This time, I decided to entirely forgo the underpainting and use the same techniques that I showed in a prior post when painting a pear .  The reference photo of "Peanut" is from a recent family vacation to Colorado, which I cropped to just show her head and shoulders.  I thought this would make a good portrait, because the viewer is left to interpret her expression.  Is she thoughtful? sad? concerned? suspicious? In reality, I think she was just tired because we were hiking on the Boulder Flatirons.  

(Just a quick word of advice for those thinking of hiking the Flatirons - don't send all the snacks and water with the slow group that only plan to go halfway up!  Those hiking all the way to the top get very thirsty and hungry.  And I know from personal experience, because that's what the rest of the family texted me after "Peanut" and I sent them photos of us eating ice cream while waiting for them to finish their hike.)

Okay, back to painting...  Below is the reference photo with the first 3 steps:  1. The Basic Shape (top right), 2. Draw the Shadow Areas (bottom left) and 3. Paint the Shadow Areas (bottom right).  The canvas is rectangular, but it's cropped here to a square, so that's why she looks so high on the canvas.

Next, I moved on with 4. The Background (top left) and 5. The Light Areas (top right).  On a still life, I would now add the reflective light; however, I didn't really see any obvious reflected light so I decided to skip this step and moved on to 6. The Midrange (bottom left).  Next, I would add the cast shadow (like the shadow under her nose and lip), but I had already painted those in step 3 so I moved on.  The "highlights" would be next, but many highlights, such as in her eyes, couldn't be painted until after the details, so I combined the highlights step and the details step into 7. Details (bottom right).

Did I finish in a day?  Not quite.  I still need to do some work on her hand and a little bit of fine-tuning. Did we eat take-out?  Sorry to say that we did.  Did the house look like it had been ransacked? Most definitely!  But it was only for one day, so that's not too bad, right?

"Apple-Shaped"

I painted an apple using the same method I used for the pear.  I can relate to the shape!

Paint with me - How to paint a pear in 10 easy steps!

I'm going to create this painting in 10 easy steps.  I hope you join me in painting your own pear and post your finished product!

I started with an 8" x 10" canvas and my palette of colors (shown above).   You will need more Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber, and Titanium White than any other colors, so put 3-4 times more of those colors on your palette.  Make a mixture of half Ultramarine Blue and half Burnt Umber.  I refer to this as your “dark mixture”.

Using your dark mixture thinned with paint thinner, paint the basic shape of your subject with straight brush strokes.  My pear will be leaning a little, so its basic shape is a leaning triangle.

This step might seem silly, but it is really important because it gives you an idea of where your subject will live on the canvas.  Step back and decide if the shape is too big or small, too high or low, or too far to one side.  It is much easier to make a change at this point than later on in the painting process.  Trust me!

Again using your thinned, dark mixture, establish the shadow areas of the painting.  In this step, you will paint the areas of the background and subject that are in shadow (for example, the darker side of the pear), not just the shadow that your subject is casting. Continue to only use straight strokes at this point.  I like to paint both the right and left sides of the shelf or table edge in shadow, so the viewer’s eye doesn’t follow the shelf edge out of the painting.

Paint your shadow areas using your dark mixture and cadmium colors.  Here I added cadmium red to my dark mix to paint on and under the shelf and in the background and I added cadmium yellow light for the pear. Keep the paint smooth and thin, but you can use curvy strokes now! 

I’m into blue right now, so I wanted a mainly blue background.  I mixed thalo blue with black and white, for the background and for the grayer areas on the table.  I added my cadmium yellows to paint the reflection on the shelf.  I like to allow the brush strokes to show without making the background too busy.

Using earth tones (Naples Yellow, Yellow Ochre and Indian Red) and white, paint the light area of the pear.  I also used a little bit of my cadmium yellow light in the mix, but be careful not to add too much.  You don’t want your light areas to be the brightest, most color-saturated areas of the painting.

When painting the light areas, I use thicker paint and more prominent brush strokes.  I load my brush, paint a couple of short straight brush strokes in a circular pattern, then reload the brush.  As I reach the edges of the light area, the paint becomes thinner and smother.

I added a bit of reflected light on the bottom right side of the pear using my light color mix.  Add just enough reflective light to tie the light and shadow areas together, but not so much that it is distracting.  This usually looks a bit odd to me when I first add it, but looks good by the time the painting is complete.

For the midrange, I used brighter, deeper colors just a tiny bit darker than my light area.  I’m always tempted to blend too much at this point.  I try to just tap back and forth between my midrange and light area, then with a clean, dry brush tap between my midrange and dark area.

At this point, it is starting to look like a pear!

Using my dark mix with a little cadmium red light, I cleaned up and darkened the shadow cast by the pear.  A solid shadow line underneath the pear can make it look like it is floating above the shelf, so I used a broken shadow line to keep it connected with the table.

I loaded my brush with a mixture of white and Indian Yellow Pale and gently placed in the highlights.  I hold my brush almost like I would hold a knife when frosting the side of a cake.  When I first put in the highlights, I’m tempted to blend them (and they look a little blurred because this photo isn't the best); however, I remind myself that they will look good once the painting is finished.  Don’t blend them!

This is the really exciting part when the painting comes together!   To complete this painting, I

•  Added the stem
•  Darkened the shelf edge and where the shelf meets the back wall
•  Threw some cadmium yellow light into my background 
•  Added a "halo" around the pear 
• Crisped up some edges and blended out others to create lost edges

These details make quite a difference.  Voila!  My painting is finished!