Daily Watercolor Painting – Papaya Still Life

Papaya watercolor painting - 7.5 x 10 inches

Papaya watercolor painting - 7.5 x 10 inches

Last night I did  a 7.5 x 10 inch watercolor painting of a papaya that has been cut in half.  It was lots of fun and not as easy as I thought.  The difficult part was getting the right color intensity on the seeds and the skin.  Shadow always present a problem for me and this one is no exception.   First I painted the skin with Winsor Yellow from Windsor and Newton.  It  is a transparent cool but towards green watercolor paint.  I added a touch of green for some part of the papaya skin for the shade.  After it is dry, I painted the yellow outline on the fresh of the papaya.  This part of the watercolor painting is the most difficult because I try to use wet in wet wash and when I apply the orange color of the fresh after the yellow outline, the outline disappear into the orange hue.  For the  orange color I use Cadmium Red mixed with Alizan Crimson both of Winson and Newton Watercolor.  It took me a third wash to get the desire orange color on the flash of the papaya and some lifting of color on the outline to get back the yellow color underneath.  After it is dry, I continue painting the  seeds of the papaya.  I mixed Winsor Green (Blue Shade) with Alizarn Crimson to get the grey color for the lighter color seeds.  But before I painted the seeds, I painted the yellow color around it with Winsor Yellow mixed with New Gamboge.  The darker or shadow of the seeds were painted with a mixture of Winsor violet and Winsor Green which gives me a black.  It is a fun watercolor exercise after all.

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