We love luscious grapes on our table, but painting them on the vine allows us look beyond their pump fruit and celebrate their twisty, woody stems and curvy green leaves. Watercolor allows you to capture the essence of sunlight so you can almost smell the grapes hanging from the vine in an arbor or against a fence in the field. This tutorial teaches how to show depth by using a technique called negative painting as you paint the fruit with its leaves and stems.
Steps
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Prepare your supplies. You will need a piece of watercolor paper from a pad, folded back and taped against the cardboard back of the pad. You need a #2 pencil, an eraser, a small spray bottle with plain water, a water container, a hairdryer and a variety of different size watercolor brushes. Include pointed and flat ones and a full range of colors in watercolor paints. Tube paints will require a palette or white plastic plate to hold and mix them.
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Use a bunch of actual grapes as models. Or, artificial ones in both green and purple. While they will show how the grapes look, but won’t give you much information about the leaves or vines, an important part of this project.Advertisement
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3Find pictures of grapes on the vine. Google: “pictures of grapes growing on arbors” that show all parts and print out one or two for reference. Also, Google: “grapes using negative painting” for an array of lovely art to view and study.
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Draw your grape design.
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Outline a few bunches of grapes on your good paper, in pencil. Just indicate the shape of the entire cluster, individual grapes will come later. Include woody, irregular stems and branches and grape leaves. Have things going off the page. Make your marks dark enough to show through the initial wash.
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6Prepare the paper with an under wash.
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7Get your watercolor paints ready by activating them. Put a few drops of clear water on all the colors using a paintbrush. Mix the colors on your palette to the consistency of milk and test each one before you apply it to a scrap of watercolor paper. It should be thin enough to move on the paper, but have enough pigment not to be wimpy.
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8Bring on the sunshine with yellow paint. Dab the tops of the grapes with yellow and the bottom of the clusters with purple for shadows.
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Do the first wash. Have your spray bottle at hand. Dab appropriate colors from the palette onto the dry paper with a brush. Place violets and greens where you have drawn the grapes and leaves. Don’t overdo this step, just lightly tone the paper.
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10Immediately, spray the paper. Do this gently and carefully, not getting it too wet. Admire how the spray carries the paint, mixing it in places and creating new colors as they merge. If you wish, tilt the paper to get the colors to run. Try to keep some white paper showing and remember to keep the colors pale.
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If water pools, mop it up. Use a thirsty brush, or a clean, damp one, to draw up the extra water. Allow this first wash to dry thoroughly by using a hair dryer on it.
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12Refine the drawing and paint it.
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Go back over your drawing. The drawing will be dimmed from the layer of paint you just added. Use a pencil to draw each individual grape in all the clusters. Refine the leaves and vines, always showing vines and even the tiniest stem with double lines. Press hard and stick with pencil.
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14With green, paint some more leaves in the blank spaces. With violet, paint a cluster of the grapes.
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Mix two puddles to begin negative painting. Make a rich, dark purple and one of green. Test these on a swatch to be sure they are not too dense. You need to see the white of the paper shining through the paint.
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16Use a small, pointed brush to go around some of the grapes in one of the bunches. Be sure to fill in the little rectangular shapes where the grapes meet.
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17Draw some more leaves around the edges. This time, you will be painting the space around them, instead of painting the leaves. They will show up as light leaves.
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18Draw some branches and stems and paint around them in brown. Dry the piece thoroughly.
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Use a scrubby brush or a piece of white eraser sponge to scrub back some lights. Cut a ½ inch piece from the pad and give each grape a highlight. You can make whole clusters in the distance by scrubbing back, too. Dry the piece again.
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Accent a section of the work. Put your painting well away from yourself and study it. Pick one area to highlight with very dark almost black paint. Again, mix this dark color rather than using a tube as the mixture you make will have more vitality and capture the light in an intriguing way. Premixed tube paint will appear flat and dead. Just accent a few areas using a small, pointed brush. Try not to overdo this. Give the bottoms of some of the branches a shadow with this color and shadow the bottoms of some of the grapes, too.
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Mat this artwork with a white, purchased mat. A standard mat will fit into a standard size frame, either from a craft store of a thrift shop. The final stage in doing art is to view it and have others see it by getting it up on the wall. Enjoy it as an expression of your talent.Advertisement
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Tips
- Have patience as this technique requires moving rather slowly and thoughtfully. The finished piece is well worth the time taken.Thanks
- Look online for video tutorials and other material to further help if you get bogged down and confused. It is a bit, at times, like patting your head while rubbing your tummy.Thanks
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