To start your painting, I like to start with the background. Because carrots come in a variety of colors, not just orange, but there's purple carrots, black carrots, Yellow Red, I'm going to just paint different varying shades of orange yellows, two reds. And so for the background, I want it to be flattering to the picture. So I'm going to do just a very subtle light blue background. So the large brush, this is a six brush, I'm just going to make a very subtle color, and then I'm going to paint it loosely onto my painting. So I'll take some of this cobalt blue, it's a pretty blue, kind of a neutral blue.

And I'll mix it with some water on my palate. And then on over here, I'll make a second puddle again with the same the cobalt. And I'll take a little this Prussian blue, just to deepen it. So now I have two shades of blue, pretty much very watery. I'll rinse my brush and now I'm just going to go around My carrots here, and I'm going to try and avoid them. I'm not going to worry if I go over them slightly.

But I am just working on a background and it's gonna be a very loose background at that. Right now I'm just trying to make a wet coat of plain water. I had some pigment left on my brush, and that's okay. It'll actually show up better in the screen for you to see. And for me to see as well, but I'm really just trying to make a wet piece of paper right now. And I'm just trying to go around the image, our main image here, the carrots.

So I'm saturating that paper. And then I'll go in with a little bit of my light color and just drop that in in areas and I like to get really close to the carrot right underneath them here with this cobalt blue. So I like to start with the bottom of my image. I'm not worrying about getting it precise. This is going to be a loose painting. And what's really neat about making a painting of carrots from the garden as opposed to perfection carrots from a grocery store that have been shaved to size is that it's really very natural, organic and loose, and I just think it's very beautiful quality.

So now that I have my first layer done, I'm just going to go in there, rinse my brush, just wet down the edges here. And I'll go back in just with a little bit of this darker color on my brush and drop it in areas underneath the carrots, just to create a natural shadow. The paper should still be wet and so it kind of blends and bleeds and moves and there's no harsh lines, and I like that look. And then I'm just going to go and dab a little bit on the exterior of the carrots kind of helps bring them into focus. Kind of avoiding the area Here's where I'm going to put the greenery, but if a little color seeps in, that's okay. It's going to dry lighter, so it's not going to be a very harsh color.

Just a little bit of contrast. Go back and clean my brush and just blend that edge out a little bit. I can go back in there with some of the cobalt blue and just put it around. Just like that. There's any areas that I want to make sure I have a little bit of pigment in. I'll make sure that's there for now.

I like how this looks. I'm gonna let this layer completely dry and we'll come back and start our carrots.