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How To Paint a Peach with Corel Painter 11 Digital WatercoloursPart Two How to Paint the Bowls in a Digital Watercolour Study Part Three How to Paint the Jug in a Digital Watercolour Study Part Four How To Paint the Tea Towel in Still Life Study with Digital Watercolour I haven't painted a Still Life for quite some time and since the techniques and brush use is different from painting digital Watercolour Landscapes, I thought I would do a study to get back into the swing of things. I find it is really essential to study traditional watercolours to learn to paint digital watercolours. I would probably do the same thing if I was attempting to learn traditional watercolour also. I never claim them as my original work. You must do this without cloning, or painting on top of the original reference, or you will never learn to develop methods and use brushes to paint digital watercolours of your own. There is another post on the subject here.
I chose one my favourite traditional watercolourists; Barbara Fox to emulate in a study of her painting entitled Peaches and Cream. Her paintings seem to glow with light and her colours are warm and rich. I especially love her Still Life paintings of fruit, and pitchers. Some even have pictures too, a great technique to tell a story.
( Note: Barbara has kindly given me permission to use her work this way!)
Studying traditional watercolours will help you learn to recognize the 'visual language' of watercolour and its characteristics. By this I mean such things as: the soft (diffused) edges, the hard edges, the pooling (fringe helps achieve this), the use of white of the paper and the translucent quality of the light and colour, which achieved by the use of transparent paints applied in layers of washes. Encarta English dictionary defines these terms:
Translucent 1. Clear but not completely clear. Clear enough for light to pass through but not completely clear.
Transparent 1. Clear or thin enough to see through. A transparent object or substance is clear or thin enough for you to see things through.2. Very pale or light. A translucent color is very pale or light.
Opaque 1. Not transparent or translucent. Impervious to light, so that images cannot be seen through it.
As I progress along the continuum of the learning to paint digitally, I am finding more and more that I am able to use resources teaching traditional watercolour.
I think that's because it took a lot of experimentation and practice to learn how to make the watercolour marks (brushstrokes and washes). There are many techniques I use in my work that are analogous to traditional watercolour.
The use of some of the regular Blender variants in Painter 11, such as Just Add Water, Grainy Water (unsaturated) Flat Grainy Stump to add the finishing touches is similar to some of the traditional methods such as blotting with a Kleenex and adding clear water to a traditional watercolour. The following illustrations are Crop-outs of the study in progress. The bottom one is a crop from Barbara's painting. The top one is a crop from my study. They aren't exactly the same (all the traditional painters reading this are probably exclaiming "Thank Goodness!"), but I think mine has some of the realistic 'visual language.'
 My Peach - Crop from Study by Joan A Hamilton  Barbara Fox's Peach - Crop from Peaches and Cream
What do you think? Does mine look like a watercolor too?I will write about the specific brushes and techniques I used very soon! Basically I used digital watercolours, and some very wet pale coloured watercolour glazes.
My custom digital watercolour blender was used and I'll give the Brush Settings for it!
 So…tune in later for more on how I actually painted the peach! Later...
I started Peach 2 because peach one has been dropped to canvas and DWC layer dried.  Illustration 4 How to Paint a Peach with Digital Watercolours
The brushes I used are:
I increased and decreased the diffusion on this brush at various points.
As you can see the nice diffused blended colours appearance has not been finished in Peach Two. I have blended as much as I can on the digital watercolour layer, now I will dry it and drop it to the canvas layer.
 Illustration 5 Digital Watercolour Layer dried and dropped to Canvas After Blending
The blends are smoother now. The next step is to add some pale watercolour glazes which will give it a softer more blended and diffused appearance.
 Illustration 6 Showing Stroke Starting Points and Direction with Watercolour Glazer 1
Custom Watercolour Glazing Brush 1 Brush Settings to make a brush that makes a pale slightly diffused glaze which runs slightly to the right.
 Illustration 7 - Brush Settings for Custom Watercolour Glazing Brush 1
Later...
The peaches are coming along nicely. I had a look at things wettened slightly and it blends just a tad more really well. Am really enjoying using the Digital watercolours and blenders I made. They have a really nice wet feel to them, and I love the way the Big Soft Diffuser (*custom) is blending the colours the way I want it to (almost)! It sure is different and relaxing to paint something that isn't the size of a forest! You may find doing studies such as this very relaxing because you can focus on the brush strokes and colours and not have to keep working everything else out!
I figured out a neat trick with a Glow Brush which helped me get the right glowing orange in places.  Illustration 8 Painting Peaches with Digital Watercolour
I'm ending the tutorial on painting peaches here. The next segemnt of tutorials on painting this study will be on painting the bowls and the jug. They are are going to be a real challenge. They've defeated me before, but all I can do is keep trying!
Related postsCommentsJoan A Hamilton said: Thanks for your vote of confidence John. I am familiar with Zbukvec's paintings , but I'll have check Nuthall out! Thanks again for commenting and making tips!
Friday, October 8th
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John Garrett said:
hi Joan,
I have been studying your post on the peach, and I created those brushes you mentioned and they work great. I think I am finally getting a handle on using the digital watercolors. I am working on a pear still life now.
You should write a book on Digital Watercolors, since there really isn't any out there. I have learned so much from your blog which actually changed my mind about DWC as I had about given up on how to replicate traditional effects.
Also I discovered Barbara Fox's watercolors a few months ago in Watercolor Artist magazine. She is an amazing watercolorist! I also have been studying Ted Nuttall and Joseph Zbukvec's paintings. I like her painting called "Blessings" that is pears and a ceramic pitcher on a wood floor. I also like how she puts some artwork on the background of her paintings.
~John