Painting an Orange Using a Negative Reference Tutorial

How to Make an Inverted Painting

Hello, I will share with you a brief tutorial of my recent inverted artwork. It is a watercolor painting of an orange from a photo that I found on Unsplash, uploaded by Roberta Sorge. I will show a not so detailed but sensible process of how I did the painting and I will also include a breif tutorial of how I edited my reference photo so you guys can do the same whenever inspiration will hit you and you feel like creating your very own inverted artwork.

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Choosing and Editing the Reference Photo

So first, I downloaded the reference photo from Unsplash and thanks to this site, the photo comes in a very high quality.

Next I opened the photo on Pixlr, clicked on Effects, and chose the Negative filter. I clicked the check mark and then I saved the photo. That's it!

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Getting on with the Painting

I prepared my materials first, namely the Berkely 700 Series watercolor paper, pencil, Pentel watercolors, and two of my paint brushes - one for tiny details and the other for bigger details.

I mixed white and skyblue paint to make a light blue base and painted it inside the sectors.

Then I added more skyblue paint by dabbing at the sides and center just outside the circle where the lines meet to build up the orange's inside

Now, I painted the segment walls with blues slightly fading it at the center to make it look more realistic.

I painted a dark green circle with ends that point to the segment wall at the center where I beleive the seeds are located.

I started painting the orange peel around the circle with dark blue and black. I also cleaned up the round segments while adding black to emphasize the segments.

Here I started emphasizing the pulps on the orange by adding blue tones that are a bit darker than the base.

This time, I added the green accents on the orange segments. This is the highlight of the segments. Adding the greens makes the orange look watery.

I then started filling up the whole orange at the back. I painted solid blue paint on the left side and then faded it towards the right with skyblue and white paints and added more water as I get to the fainted section on the right. I curved my brushstrokes at the ark seen in my reference photo so it would make the orange appear rounder.

Finnaly, I added the dark blue accent on the orrange. This is the light reflection on the peel.

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Here is the compiled progress shots of my painting without the negative filter:

And here is the progress with the negative filter:

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The Artwork

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Ready to make your own inverted art?

Doing inverted art is easy and fun, and you can create an amazing artwork within a few time without even knowing it. Just make sure that you choose subjects has a black background or if not, with any other color, just try and experiment with it. Have fun!

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Photo reference from Roberta Sorge on Unsplash.

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Thank you for reading!

I will post more inverted artworks soon so if you'd like, you can follow me to get updated.

@knthalo

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