Using shade tool on Paintology to paint fruits – (Galaxy Tab 2)

I have been getting more used to the Galaxy Tab 2 with my Paintology app loaded and playing around with the brushes and strokes. The key to good drawing and painting requires a versatility in the tools you use and not confine yourself to any specific set of tools. I have to always keep in mind that Paintology has 20 types of powerful brushes that have great effects and are ideal for certain subjects when drawing.

Fig-1
Fig-1
Fig-2
Fig-2

With this painting (fig 1), I wanted to pick a subject that most painters and artists usually do once in awhile to keep their skills honed. The advantage of drawing fruits is that you get a good handle on the color, shade, texture and the light that falls on the fruits. I found a photo in Google images and thought it would be a good one for this training. The first part to the drawing is to pick the right canvas color which was a sky blue and then used the shade tool with a off-white color to draw the outline of the fruits (fig. 2).

Fig-3
Fig-3
Fig-4
Fig-4
Fig-5
Fig-5

I use general strokes that follow the outline of the fruit and picked the appropriate colors to fill the objects with the respective colors (fig. 3). I then focused on the apple and decided to build this up by applying more of the red and changing the tonal colors from the pallette. The beauty of the shade tool is that you can continue to build the layers by going over it repeatedly and the layers will darken. You can exploit this to create the solidity of the apple as I did in fig. 4. By continuing to build on the colors and paying attention to the shadows and the light falling on the apple, I finally ended up with picture in fig. 5. By using a different gradient of green, grey and darker colors of the red, I was able to create a realistic look to the area around the stem.

For the other fruits such as the lemon, lime and orange, I used the shade tool to build up the layers. However, I experimented with a different brush, the ‘grass’ brush tool and was able to create a very different texture for the surface of the lemon and orange. I could not find any options to create the pimples that are usually evident in real lemons and oranges. The body of the lime was created by using a darker green and gradually moving towards the lighter shade of green to create the solid look.

It always surprises me that in every venture in painting or drawing, you learn something which will add to your experience and skills and allow you to render something accurately from your mind. What I also found from doing this painting is the difference that styluses can make to your drawing efforts. Initially I opted for a retail price rubber tip stylus to draw the outline but as I started filling in the colors, I found the resistance of the rubber to the glass tablet made it harder for me to draw. I switched to the home-made stylus and found that I needed little effort to glide the pen over the tablet and hence fill the colors. It was so much easier for me and in a way reminded me of the same way one paints in a normal medium such as acrylic on canvas.

Until next time, happy painting!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *