Blackcurrant Redcurrant - My Current Jam Labels
Painting blackcurrant and redcurrant was fun. Those closely related berries brought some challenge for me as an artist. I had to juggle between botanical approach (e.g. realistic painting) yet still keep in mind that those tiny berries will be even tinier on the jam labels. So, in spite of my love to realism in watercolor, I had to simplify a little.
I still wanted some details on the blackcurrant and redcurrant berries, so I painted them doubling the real size on paper. And when I painted, I had to step aside quite a bit in order to see the "whole picture" and not to get lost in the berry maze.
It is interesting to note that when I painted blackcurrant, I had to apply red (Alizarin Crimson) as the first wash, in order for the black to have rather warm tint.
On another hand, when painting redcurrant, I used black and purple while red was still wet. That helped me to indicate transparency of the redcurrant berries, kind of see-through berry seeds feeling:
The jam labels project continues. I am not only eating lots of good fruits and berries, but definitely "killing" many birds with one stone: researching botanical structure of the fruits and berries, having good time painting with watercolors, and accomplishing a big important project.
