How to Paint a Peach Using Acrylic Paints

Often, it's easier to learn to paint when we focus on a single item. Consider artist Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Her paintings usually feature one big flower by itself. You can get the same effect using a peach. Acrylics are a good paint for beginners. Colors blend well while giving you more control than you'd have with watercolors. To keep it simple, we'll start with a 9-by-12-inch canvas. Limited colors and easy shapes will likely give a pleasantly surprising result.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Heavy paper or canvas no larger than 9x12 inches
• Peach with stem and a leaf or two
• Acrylic paints
• Two paintbrushes (one wide, one with a pointed tip)
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Palette or separate cups for mixing colors

1. Set the peach in front of you. Pencil in the peach as a circle. Include in rough lines the stem and leaf at the top.

2. Look at the peach. Note that it isn't completely round but is wider near the top and flatter near the bottom. Make the peach on your paper the same shape you see. The stem isn't usually a straight line but is loosely curved like a C. Give yours the same curve and width. Leaves are roughly heart-shaped. Adjust your leaf to make it more realistic. Make any final adjustments as you compare your drawing to the peach. Erase stray lines from the earlier sketch.

3. Look at the color of the peach. It isn't a solid orange or yellow but a blend of the two. Often, there's a stripe of yellow that curves along the side of the peach, depending on where the light is. In the little bowl-shaped spot on top where the peach meets the stem, there's a brighter yellow where the light hits that contrasts with a deeper shadow that's almost brown. Try using tones of pink and deeper coral on your peach.

4. Mix yellow and orange acrylic paint together on your palette or in a cup. Mix colors well, but don't worry if streaks appear when you apply paint to paper. This is natural and makes the peach more realistic. Fill in the peach, using orange in darker spots and yellow in lighter areas. Always wash your brush with water before you apply paint in a different color.

5. Let the paint dry before you apply bright lines to create strong highlights. If you add lighter stripes while the paint is wet, it will mix with the color you already have.

6. Once your peach is complete, add a contrasting background color like bright blue around the peach's edges. The background doesn't have to be solid. Instead, color can be patchy to suggest light and shadows behind the peach.

Tips & Warnings

• Blend colors while still wet for a softer look. This works well for a fuzzy peach. Let paint dry before you apply the strongest highlights. Before you begin painting, bring home several peaches from the market. Look at the difference in shapes and shading in each. Notice how the peach looks when the light hits it from an angle.