Flora and Fauna

A couple of years ago I started growing strawberries and red currants in our garden. They taste very yummy. The berries you can see in my watercolour on heatpressed paper are the first I picked a couple of seasons ago. I felt the photograph I took had great composition and so I decided to paint them. My main focus for this piece was to capture light and shadows. I created the shadows using wet in wet with a tiny amount of pigment on the brush. I used layers and layers of pigment, using a fine brush to mark out areas of light shining off of the berries. Sometimes I used a thick amount of pigment to bring out those rich reds. Other artists on YouTube suggest using white gel pen for all sorts of effects but here I have used white gel pen to give the suggestion of how shiny those berries are. I think overall the white gel pen is more successful on the currants as opposed to the strawberries but using a variety of techniques to create the illusion of shine and shadow has taught me a lot about painting still life in watercolours.