Oil study – Lime Wedges and Backgrounds

Oil study for Threads

Well this was fun. I learned a lot here. The subject was a lime wedge against different colored backgrounds. In the end I used pretty much the same colors for the wedge itself but the background (obviously) and the foreground and reflection changed color. In particular that reflection, even though it looks yellow/orange is in real life a pure grey. Who’d have thought? In hindsight I should have known as a yellow reflection on a gray background will result in a neutral gray!

Here’s a closeup of the result

Lime wedge oil study

Still life Watercolor Color Matching Study

Although everything came out ok in the end I made the classic mistake of being overconfident going into this. As it is a study I was concentrating hard on getting the colors and values as close as I could (apart from some of the grey shadows which were too drab) and I almost lost my way. Lesson learned – never let down your guard or watercolor will bite you.

Here is the original photo.


And finally I made a video of the painting process for those interested.