"Grapefruit" from the #PopOfColorProject Series

Another piece, "Grapefruit", has been added to my #PopofColorProject Series! I love these pieces for two reasons: 1) I love, love, LOVE drawing with ink. I love how it looks and I love being able to shade and show depth with just one clean color, but 2) I love how the POP of one or a few colors looks against the black and white. 

The last piece I did, "Orange Bug", I completed using watercolors only. This time, I received a new set of Gouache paints from Arteza and decided to combine those with my watercolors for a more solid color look. I am very happy with the results!

This was another photo I saw on Anthropologie's Instagram page, similar to the "Orange Bug" piece. Here is the original:

I loved the look of this photo but instead of sketching it completely by hand, I wanted to get the shaping just right so I used tracing paper to trace the outlines of each piece of fruit.

 

Now, I'm ready to outline the shapes and add in my shading! As usual, I used a Micron Ink Pen, .45mm. This, to me is the perfect tip width to use for any sketching really. When I do lettering, I'd prefer to use .5mm or higher.

 

Shading makes all the difference doesn't it?? Without the shading at the bottom of the pieces you wouldn't know A) that they were resting on anything or B) where they were positioned in comparison to one another. I used a simply line pattern to fill in the bottoms where there were not fruit. In the original photo, some of those areas were filled by other spherical pieces but I wanted the focus to be on the pieces at the top.

Finally, I am ready to paint! My idea all along was to only paint in the grapefruits but as I did that, I didn't want it to look like I "forgot" the oranges and lemons. So, I did all three! I mixed my color combos with my Arteza gouache...

...in a grapefruit, orange, and lemon color, and got painting!

 

I hope you are enjoying the pieces in this series so far! Prints of this piece and all others in the series can be found in my Etsy store. Click here to see "Grapefruit" directly. Thanks for reading!