Just Paint It: How to paint Grapes

Daily Inspiration
Have you ever noticed how you want something, and want it, and want it, and when it finally comes, the joy is short-lived? An then you just want something else? The real joy is in the journey, Friends.

So many new and exciting things are happening, I can hardly stand it! I wrote last week about winning the What’s Your Passion contest at Meylah, where I won a website/blog/store. I’m building that site this week and all my my paint tutorials will be there, as well as my Paint Parties.
If you haven’t visited Meylah, go check them out. In fact, go visit them now because today’s post is about Moi! But you can win too! Just take a few minutes and write what your passion is. They have four more slots open! They are the coolest people, so supportive, and I can’t wait to work with them!
I have some more surprises coming! I’ll give you a hint – they have to do with painting (duh!) & passion! Stay tuned!

Now, let’s paint some grapes! Easy ones! You could make these any color – green, red, blue. I just chose purple. This is a Q&D (quick & dirty) tutorial because Fall is coming and we’ll be doing tons of paintings with grapes & pumpkins & leaves. Purple works really well with fall colors, but use whatever color you like.

Here’s the pattern. See how it’s just a bunch of circles? You could make them more oval, if you wanted. Anything curved will work.

First, paint the outer grapes. You just want to get the shape of the grape bunch established. Then paint the inside. You can paint in circles or just slap it on – either way will work.

Now you’re ready to highlight. I used a pale pink. You could also use white. Just add some curves to each grape.
I understand that it’s kind of hard to know where to put the highlighting. Hang in there with me – you’ll see how this all comes together.

Now add some shading. I used a dark brown. You could use dark grey, deep purple – anything darker than your original basecoat. You want to add the shading to create depth so the grapes look like they’re stacked on top of each other.
An easy rule of thumb is just to put shading on the other side of where you highlighted.

Then cover everything with Purple, or your basecoat color. Purple has a lot of pigment so after doing this, I felt I needed to go back and add some more highlighting. You can do this as many times as you want – highlight/topcoat, shade/topcoat – until you like the end result. Just make sure to let your topcoat dry. You’ll see more highlighting and shading when the topcoat is thoroughly dry.

This time, I added more pink highlights. See how I painted some full circles of pink? Now watch what happens when I topcoat . . .

There – it looks like some grapes are on top of the others, doesn’t it? That’s from the extra highlights. You could even go back and add some more pink and not topcoat it. But usually beginners don’t like to see unblended brushstrokes. It’s totally up to you.

We’ll do the grape leaves tomorrow. They’re not hard – in fact, I have a really easy way to draw them that I’ll share with you.
I have tons of grape patterns that I’ll post for you to use. Or look online at Grape Clipart.
Here are some other grapes I’ve painted to give you even more ideas.