Lemons or anything similar are a great way to start! Why? 

Because the shape is very simple to draw even when you think you lack drawing skills.

Start with a circle or oval shape, and tweak its edges to make it look more like a lemon.

Not perfect? That is in fact absolutely fine as we don't want to paint a perfect looking one or it might look cartoony. The real world being anything but perfect, for realism, stick with simplicity and trust the painting process that is to come as this is what will allow your art to come alive.

Again here, lemons will be fairly simple to colorize with watercolors as unlike a parrot for instance, a beginner won't feel overwhelmed when it comes to picking colors.

However, for realistic watercolor paintings, even in a lemon, think about incorporating more than one color. Otherwise, the art will end up looking flat and cartoony.

For example, take the lemon's main color, yellow, and add a tad of red in places before the initial coat of yellow dries. This way, several shades of orange and red will appear depending on how much pigment you add. We want to keep these additions subtle so the lemon remains yellowish overall. Only when you look closely would you notice other colors have been added in places.

Remember to plan for a dark color for shadows as well, I picked burnt umber and neutral tint. Watch the video to see how I added all these colors to a yellow lemon.

Water control in backgrounds is a very useful skill to master for a realistic watercolor painter who wants to use watercolor's amazing effects in combination to a love for detail.

The good news is, you don't have to learn this skill right away as a beginner to be able and paint realistically!

Leave the background blank and focus on your main subject.

Not only will you be able to improve on realism little by little, without stressing about having to paint a large area and the paint drying too fast on, but, you will also get a better feel for water control, in a gentle and hassle-free way.

Later in time, you can start to add a background like I did in this realistic lemon painting watercolor video.

To build up realism, it's great to apply the main colors as a quick base layer, no details. And later, add to this base with additional layers and more detail, more color, some shadows and highlights.

Is it always the case? No, you can paint realistically enough without much layering. However, for best results and a chance to tweak the painting to look like the way you want it to, nothing beats layers in watercolor.

Layers are a chance to make the shape look as you want it to, by adding shadows and highlights to the main colors. With layers, you can also increase the vibrancy and depth in a painting, thanks to watercolors being transparent.

And did you know that as a realism lover, you have a gift ? Not that of realism, as anyone can learn to master the techniques. No, chances are you have a gift for patience and adding detail, which sometimes can also make us feel like we don't belong to the watercolor world because it is often so loose.

Don't let this discourage you or feel like you need to change your style, on the contrary, I'll show you we have the power to use loose techniques to complement our realistic paintings, thanks to layering! 

A painting without shadows will look flat and one dimensional. While a painting with shadows will give an impression of shape and look three dimensional.

First, you will need to observe your reference to spot the shadows.

Then, think about adding a dark color to your painting.

Make sure and watch the video to see how shadows impact your main colors (in the lemon, yellow, orange and red).

Beginners often fear adding too many shadows. This is why it's important to observe to know where to add them, and then to layer, so that you can build them up little by little. Keep the subtle shadows light and on the opposite, make the dark ones really dark, like I did in the fabric creases.

Like shadows, a painting without texture nor details will be a bit flat and cartoonish.

You can leverage loose watercolor techniques here, like splattering. It works great for a lemon since we see dotted texture on the skin.

You will see in the video my simple version of a lemon looks a lot better as soon as I add the splatters. 

On the level up version, the splatters are smaller to look more refined to add to the natural look of a lemon.

Darker paints come in handy once more here, so those splatters show on top of a lighter layer made of yellow, orange and red.

For more realism, we can add more details, directly with a paintbrush. One useful thing to remember is you won't need a lot of it, let me show you in the video.

You will get a feel of how much detail is right for your own realistic watercolors with practice and as beginner, it seems safer to start with just a bit. You can always add a bit more. Take the time to stop and look back on your work a while later when in doubt.

Like shadows and texture, to amplify a beautiful realistic look, don't forget the highlights.

Realistic watercolor is awesome because unlike loose watercolor, you don't have to plan for your highlights ahead of time and get stuck with them afterwards. And because in my case, I use white gouache, rather than preserving the white in the paper, my highlights look very natural and all the more realistic. White gouache is easy to remove. It can be translucent when you add water to it or be very strong when used pure, so you can really do everything and even remove mistakes.

To leverage watercolor into realistic painting, why not mix looser techniques into your realistic painting.

This is exactly what I did in the fabric all around the lemon. I leveraged loose techniques to make it look blurry and out of focus on the background, which in turns, brings out the realism in the lemon even better !

To be able to pull it off, mastering water control and learning to paint watercolor backgrounds is the next step. However first, enjoy learning realistic watercolor with a simple subject !

For more help from me with realistic watercolor techniques, water control, watercolor backgrounds and more, I invite you to join the newsletter to stay up to date with watercolor painting tips for the realism enthusiast.

Are you ready to start your journey towards improving watercolors right now ?

For step by step and real time guidance from me, check out the Skillshare classes and workshops. 

See you soon !