Mastering Realism in Watercolor: Depth, Texture, and Patience

I love to use watercolor as realistically as possible, and this coconut gave me two key: creating depth in the foreground and coconut and capturing texture.

One big question beginner watercolor painters face is how to depict white in a painting. This comes with practice and experience but it’s all about water amount, and choosing the correct hues. I approached it by blending ultramarine blue with violet, Winsor purple, and a touch of Payne's grey to achieve a pale blue hue.

This is a slow process of building the colors up and letting each layer dry. Then, when you want to keep the highlights, it's a careful painting that keeps the white of the paper visible and softens the edges with 10% water.

For the coconut coir, I painted my base color of violet with imidazoline brown, always being careful to keep my highlights visible. Then, once I was happy with my darks and lights and it was fully dry, I used a thin brush with chocolate brown, burnt sienna, and carmine to create the rope-like fur of the coir.

This was a great watercolor project because it pushed me to practice important painting techniques like managing darks and lights and color blending. It reminded me of the importance of patience and precision in building up layers, and it was very rewarding to see the coconut come to life on the page.