I have been illustrating food since 1980. I especially enjoyed painting fruit, which I have been sharing on Twenty Lines. For this post, I am sharing my illustrations of apricots. These illustrations were used on packaging labels for yogurt, juice, jam and baby food.
All of these paintings were done before Photoshop existed. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:
I have illustrated so many fruits, that it’s fun to select groups of them to share. I have been a food illustrator for over 30 years. For this post, I’ve chosen plums and pomegranates. These illustrations were used on labels for yogurt, baby food, juice, jam and vitamins.
Plums are similar to grapes with their powdery surface. I used a light gray colored pencil over my watercolor painting; the bluish cast was useful to portray that effect.
This painting was early in my career. Later on, I became much better at painting prunes. Compare this with my later illustration below.
Seeing these prunes close up, shows how abstract they become. There are many colors to be found within them. I especially loved the deep burgundy.
The pomegranates illustrated here were created later in my career. For the last few illustrations, I painted over a digital rendering that I generated on my computer and was definitely more photorealistic. The computer was extremely useful composing my painting and allowed for clients to give great input before I painted anything.
An example of my photo-reference shows how much improvement was needed!
I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:
I have been illustrating food since 1980. I especially enjoy painting fruit, which I continue to share on Twenty Lines. Each variety of fruit I rendered posed its own particular challenges. Below are many of my paintings of grapes, as well as close-ups. My grape illustrations were used on labels for yogurt, wine, juice, jam and vitamins.
When rendering grapes, I always looked for ways to capture the powdery surface on them. Using a colored pencil over a watercolor painting (once it was dry, of course) was very useful for this effect. Colored pencil was opaque with a bluish cast, which is why it worked so well.
All of these paintings were done before Photoshop existed. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:
As an artist, my niche was food illustration. It would probably be even more descriptive to say that I was a fruit illustrator.
This was used on Darigold Yogurt.
For this post, I’ve decided to share blueberries. Most of my illustrations were used on labels. Some examples of the products were yogurt, liqueur, sorbet, jam, juice and vitamins.
This was used for a non-stick spray can label.
A few of these paintings were rendered with markers and colored pencils. Others were created with watercolor dyes.
This was Blueberry Cooler flavor for Caprisun.
This label was for blueberry jam.
This illustration was used on a yogurt label. I regretted cropping the artwork.
These actually are sloe berries, used in gin. But they resemble blueberries.
This illustration is of bilberries, and was used on an herbal vitamin label.
All of these paintings were done before Photoshop existed. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:
I want to share my paintings of nuts and have thought of a few puns related to them:
Painting nuts got me “out of my shell” and I tried not to “crack up.” All those details made me “nuts.”
My paintings were commissioned assignments of illustrations that were used on labels. The smaller almonds were for a liqueur label, the peanut butter and mixed nut medleys were for a supermarket brand and the rest were created for a company named Azar Nuts.
I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:
All of these paintings were done before Photoshop existed. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at: 
