Stamped still life fruit in watercolor, & faux Copic watercolor

Hello friends! Welcome to a fruit-y kind of day around here! The new Colorado Craft Company release is TODAY – and they asked if I’d be their featured designer for this one….wheeee! Once I saw it was fruit, I most certainly said yes. Not only have I taught the painting of fruits – I just also love fruit!

Supplies for this project are linked at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links may be used at no cost to you.

One of several ideas I had was to make some dramatic, though simple designs – using high contrast of a rich background. I created first in watercolor, then did a similar look, though less “loose”, in Copic.

Check out the video below – then of course scroll through this photo-laden post…I tried a few of the fruits several times!

View on YouTube.

Lemons

I painted the lemon several times – not only to practice, but uhm, because filming always seems to have things go belly up! I decided I liked all three enough though that by the time I hit the third one, I included at least a comparison of all three.

The stamping technique is to stamp LIGHTLY first in a permanent ink like Versafine; then something water soluble like Oxides. Then if the lines disappear a bit from the oxides, you can still see a little of that black outline.

I like to connect the image too the background by letting the color flow from one into the other – a sharp line is what Copic provides, but the joy of watercolor is in the variance of beautiful edges. So I like to let ‘er flow! Even after painting the dark background, I’ll work the edges slightly to let them cross into each others’ turf.

Copic Lemon

Copic markers give a cleaner look – though you CAN do the soft blending to mimic watercolor! All four stamps are colored over on Ellen Hutson’s blog today, you can follow that tutorial for coloring the stamps, then add this cool dark backround to any of them.

Pears

The pears were actually the first one I tried this with – but stamping a clear black line as in this first one. It’ll make some folks feel more comfortable too have a clear outline to paint into – you can decide what look you like best for your art.

Getting looser also involves happy accidents – like the green dripping down like a reflection below the pear, and a floating bit of “smoke” off that leaf!

I tried staying a little tidier with this one…

The Copic pear….with a complementary color, purple, for the background!

Pineapple

This one was the hardest to do in watercolor – I’ll just warn you of that! I needed to call more on my painting skills than the other ones, as there are all sorts of little tiny bits and pieces to a pineapple.

Creating the roundness on a pineapple is covered in the video on the Ellen Huton blog – when working with a dark background, pull in dark colors for your pineapple.

Avocado

The Avocado stamp set includes the full avocado as well as the broken-open one….and “You Guac my world” just cracks me up! I used an analagous group of colors – blues and bluegreens – isn’t it a different look than the others with more contrast?

In several of these, I added strong light sources – indicated by strong shadows. Including a shadow of a wall or object you cannot see, but you know it’s there because of that little triangle on the bottom left!

The Copic version is much brighter – but is still lovely in an analagous color combo.

Another video!

Yes, I’m an overachiever! If you’d like to see each of the fruits colored in Copics, check out my post over on the Ellen Hutson blog too:

SUPPLIES

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• Colorado Craft Company:
  • Lemon Zest Stamps
  • Hugs and Pears Stamps
  • Aloha Pineapple Stamps
  • Avocado Love Stamps
  • Small Italian Tiles
• Embossing:
  • VersaMark Ink Pad
  • Powder Deactivator Tool, We R
  • White Embossing Powder, Hero Arts
  • Heat Tool, WOW
  • Versamark Pen
• Scotch Foam Mounting Tape
• MISTI Stamping Tool, My Sweet Petunia
• Arches Cold Press Paper: EH – BLICK
• Silver Brush Black Velvet Round #12: EH – BLICK – AMZ
• Inks:
  • VersaFine Ink Pad, Onyx Black
  • Ranger Distress Oxide Ink Pads
    • Wild Honey
    • Peeled Paint
  • Jet Black Lawn Fawn Ink Pad
  • Fadeout No Line Ink, Ink On 3
• Neenah Cardstock, Solar White:25pk – 250pk
• Daniel Smith Watercolors: EH • BLICK
• Copic Markers: EH – Blick