
Step-by-step drawing of a still life using watercolor paints – easy task even for beginners
Drawing a still life with paintswatercolor painting in several stages is available for both children and adults, even if they are just starting to learn how to work with paints. It won't take much time to complete the drawing. By following step-by-step instructions, you can easily create a beautiful autumn-themed still life on paper with your own hands. Today, everyone without exception knows about watercolor paints from early childhood. Each of us has drawn with them at least once in our lives. Already in kindergarten and school, children are taught to use a brush and paints, apply strokes, and create simple drawings. But not long ago, until the nineteenth century, watercolor was not so popular among painters. It is believed that the birthplace of this paint is China. It was in this country that paper was invented, on which masters depicted their masterpieces using this type of paint. Gradually, watercolor took its place and many famous artists around the world began to use it. The technique of painting with such paints allows you to achieve a special effect of some mysticism, illusoryness, translucency, and ease of composition of the created drawing. Only at first glance it seems that the process of drawing in this technique is complex. In fact, absolutely nothing is impossible. You can easily cope with the drawing using our step-by-step drawing lesson. In today's article you will learn about painting a still life using watercolors. Almost anyone can draw this autumn still life. Initially, we need to choose the nature that we want to depict in our drawing. To make the still life really bright and beautiful, you should choose different vegetables or fruits. They should differ in color, shape and size. We will take vegetables as nature, namely eggplant, cucumber and carrots. The vegetables we have chosen for nature fully meet all the requirements – differ from each other in all respects. Now we will start preparing materials and tools. We will need the simplest and most standard set.
- White sheet of paper for watercolor paints
- Brushes for drawing
- Capacity with water
- Pencil simple
- Eraser (just in case)
- Palette
Before you start drawingstill life, be sure to slightly moisten the paint of the colors that we will need. Let's start with the first stage of drawing. We need to make a sketch using a simple pencil. We just need to use light, barely noticeable lines to draw the contours of the vegetables. At this stage we determine from which side the light falls on them. To make it easier to navigate, we schematically depicted a sun in the sketch, which we will later erase with an eraser. We also need to mark the outline of the shadow, which we will draw later. Second stage When the sketch is ready, you can start working in watercolors. To do this, take one element of the design and moisten it with a wet brush. In our drawing, the first element to draw was a cucumber. Now we take very light green paint onto a brush and apply it to the cucumber.
Remember.We will not use pure color solutions. To obtain one color or another, we will need to mix paints with each other on a palette we have prepared. While the surface of the cucumber is wet, we will darken it a little. Just be sure to leave a small highlight on the upper part of the vegetable.
Third stage Leave the cucumber to let the paint sitit has dried, and we start drawing the second one. Now we will decorate the carrots. We do this in exactly the same way as in the previous case with the cucumber.
We depict the drawing gradually, moving from light shades to darker ones. When painting with watercolors, you need to apply tone to tone.
Fourth stage We still have one more vegetable left that has not been drawn. This is an eggplant. We will draw it, as in the case of the other two vegetables, using the same principle.
Be sure to remember about the presence of solarglare In the case of glare, it all depends on how shiny the surface of the object itself is. The more it shines, the more visible and brighter the sun's glare will be. The size of such a glare directly depends on the size of the vegetable, and its color scheme depends on how smooth the surface is. In our case, there is no glare at all on carrots, but on eggplant it will be the largest, since its peel is glossy. And the brightness of the highlight on the eggplant will be the greatest. Fifth stage Let's return to the initial stage of work, drawing a cucumber. Let’s add another dark tone to its image, which will be identical to the natural vegetable, and will also emphasize the features of its shape.
Sixth stage We carry out similar actions withthe other two vegetables. At the same time, it is necessary to try to optimally convey all the features of each individual item, texture, color, size. Form. Remember, every depression – this is a darker shade. A deeper depression also has a darker color.
The peculiarity of all elements must be emphasized inin accordance with natural vegetables. Seventh stage So that, when looking at the drawing, it does not seem as if it is suspended in space, we need to draw the shadows that fall from the image of the vegetables. It seems that they are lying on the surface. The darkest shadows are under and closer to the vegetables.
For the eggplant drawing, we need to add some greenery.Eighth stage Since the carrots turned out to be somewhat pale and expressionless, we need to correct this and give it a natural color. So we'll take some deep orange paint and apply it to the carrots. If the tone is again not intense enough, repeat the procedure again.
Paint on the cucumber with a rich green color.grooves, as well as pimples characteristic of this vegetable. As for the carrot, we will make the grooves on it a little darker than the main color. Now let's move on to the eggplant. Let's make the side that is not in the area where the light hits darker. For this purpose, we will take a paint of a more intense, saturated shade. We must have a sufficient number of colors in the palette, or rather, each color must have at least three shades. For some time we need to put the drawing aside and let the paint dry. Then we look very carefully at all the details. If we don’t like something, we have a chance to correct this mistake and add other tones to the images, darker than those already in the picture. If everything suits you and you are happy with what you see in the drawing, then the work can be considered completely completed.
The main principle in working on this drawing isis to draw on wet. An equally important point is the mandatory mixing of different paints to obtain the desired shade. The main thing is to experiment with colors and shades and not work with pure paints.