My Lemon Tree

Rainy winter days provide the perfect soft light to paint the offerings of my lemon tree. The pungent lemony fragrance fills my studio and the deep yellow color of the flesh is exquisite to re-create in a layered oil painting.  The greatest pleasure for me is working from life, capturing the beauty and light. Our lemon trees were so full, snipping a few branches off with the attached round and plump yellow bursts of color I loaded up several baskets full to bring into the studio, these gems stimulate all my senses.

The painting process clears my mind and calms my spirit and when life dishes you up so many lemons why not paint them.

I love working from home where I can see the beautiful hills, wildlife and birds and even my chickens scratching for worms I see from my North facing window. It provides me with the perfect soft natural lighting.

My studio set up

I used my gardening snips to remove excess leaves and taped, wired and pinned the branches in order to achieve a balanced composition.

Initially to compensate for the lack of light on a stormy day I did clamp a small light to my set up to do the initial drawing and added  a black curtain to the left to control a little natural light bounce coming in. As I progressed into this piece the next day I ditched the small light and continued to use natural filtered light coming in.

First I worked mostly on the greenery and did the occasional sprint down to the lemon tree to pick a few more fresh branches for their leaves as the ones on my stand had began to curl. I kept what I liked and replaced a few so I could see the fresh green glow which captured the light filtering through.

My palette

I chose to use a limited palette of cad yellow light, cad yellow deep, cad orange, burnt umber, ultramarine blue and a mix of lead and titanium white. Later I added a glaze of Gamblin translucent sap green in just a few spots.

Most of my paints I use today come from Natural Pigments, their brand is Rublev and I am fortunate to live not far away from their facility so supporting a local family run business who provides an excellent product and service is a no brainer but there are some pigments and mediums from Gamblin, Old Holland and Michael Harding that I adore too.

The finished painting took me 5 days to slowly build the layers, plus two weeks dry time. Meanwhile I ordered the new frame which arrived in a few weeks and now I am off to ship it to Sylvia White's realArt Gallery in time for their early spring exhibition.