A bowl of lemons - Watercolour

By the size of the projected shadows, you will guess that this week's painting was not done from nature in England… Outside, the weather is mostly grey and the sun timid.

This still life was done using one of the photographs I took while in the South of France during last summer. The photograph was shot in the morning, around ten o’clock and the sun was already bright. I liked the multiple reflections: the lemons on the glazed ceramic bowl and the reflected light in the shadows of the lemons.

A bowl of lemons - Watercolour by Benoit Philippe

The strong summer light means stark contrasts, with almost black shadows on the right and lost edges where the light hits the bowl and the lemons on the left. To reinforce the sense of intense light, I only suggested the table, leaving most of the background white.

If you are interested to see how watercolours and oil painting lend themselves to different moods and effects, check out “Café et croissant”, a small oil on panel I executed from a reference photograph taken during the same session.