For over thirty years, I’ve illustrated food. I loved the challenge of rendering fruit; each variety had beautiful colors and textures to capture. With strawberries, I learned how to replicate the pattern of tiny hives crisscrossing each berry. They looked more realistic when I painted shadows and highlights around each hive.
The illustrations I am sharing below were used on labels to indicate the strawberry flavor for yogurt, juice, jam, milk, liqueur and sorbet. I’ve included some close-ups.
Painting a splash was probably one of the hardest things I’ve illustrated.
This illustration was early in my career, before I learned better techniques for capturing the strawberry texture.
The strawberries here were supposed to be simpler and less realistic. This was used on a liquid bath soap label.
Some of these paintings were rendered with markers and colored pencils and others were created with watercolor dyes. 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:
For this post, I am sharing illustrations I painted for a soil company called Supersoil. Several years ago, Supersoil Inc. merged into Miracle Grow and the packaging with my illustrations were no longer available. There were unique challenges for every painting and I searched through my neighborhood with my camera to find beautiful gardens I could photograph. When I completed this project, I enjoyed seeing my paintings printed on the large bags of soil sold in many home improvement stores.
For this first post, I share about four projects I painted. I have included close-ups, sketches, marker comps and even the original layout provided for me.
The first painting was for a potting soil mix and I illustrated a pot filled with flowers.
This second illustration was for a product called “Wonderbloom.”
This is my layout provided by the art director.
This is a preliminary marker sketch.
This illustration was for a product called “Palm and Cactus Mix.” I followed the art direction, which had a strange request for a “door going nowhere.” The strange perspective makes me uncomfortable, but my favorite part of my painting is the small lizard in the shadows (I had lizards as pets when I was younger!)
The lizard is there!
The last assignment for this post was for a product used on sod lawns called “Turf Fit.” This painting includes a dog, and it is one of the few animals I’ve illustrated.
My photo reference of sod shows that it was not very pretty to paint!
My technique utilizes watercolors, dyes and colored pencils; these were created 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:
M.A.D. is Mentoring Artists Digitally and all information can be found on the above link.
Sorry couldn’t post yesterday, got home from Physiotherapy and spent the rest of the day laying flat! One day I’ll be able to see my screen floating above my head even when I’m in bed (or on the floor) and be able to continue as if nothing has changed. But not today. Not yesterday either :)
Thank you for the likes and comments.
Cheers till next time. (No image today, new ones coming.)
