Coffee grinder, a semi-hard exercise

This watercolor exercise of a coffee grinder is to be painted with three different colors: French ultramarine, burnt sienna and any warm yellow.

The blue ultramarine together with the brown should give a neutral black or gray color. The shade of gray can vary depending on the brand of paint you use, ranging from greenish black to violet black.

The yellow color can be any warm yellow color. I myself use Nickel Dioxin yellow (often called New Gamboge) which is no longer available, today I would have used Nickel Azo yellow instead.

Paint the background with a mixture of French ultramarine and burnt sienna. Save the entire coffee grinder. As you can see, the color mixture varies between brownish gray to a more bluish color. I have painted the table bluest, while the surface behind the grinder is brown-toned.

I also added some extra blue paint to the shadow of the coffee grinder. All this is done in one layer of paint, you should not paint a part and wait until the surface is dry, but you should paint everything at once. Let the colors flow into each other.

Paint all the wood on the coffee grinder with burnt sienna. Try to make the lower right part bright with water. That part is significantly lighter in the photo. The label is painted with a yellowish color which will later become the text on the label.

Furthermore, the brass dome is painted completely flat, with the exception of a small Highlight on the right side, with the yellow color. The handle can also be painted black (blue+brown).

All these layers must be painted when the surroundings are dry, the paint in the different layers must not be allowed to run into each other.

Mix a brownish gray color of sienna and ultramarine. With this you should emphasize different highlights and shadows on the coffee grinder. Sometimes you have to paint several times on the same surface to achieve the effect you are after.

Notice the thin highlight on the top and right side of the drawer. Continue in this way until all the wood on the coffee grinder is finished. Don’t forget the little black lines in all the joints between the pieces of wood.

Then continue in the same way on the brass. Use a grayish color mixed with brown and blue. Yellow is hardly needed, the metal is already yellow. Try to get a nice shine in the metal by painting shadows mainly on the left side and save the shine in the dome. All small frills on the crank must also be painted.

Paint the knob on the drawer with a black paint mixture (blue+brown). Leave a highlight. Do the same with the crank handle.

This is the simplest thing in the whole painting, just a blue-gray shadow that the coffee grinder casts over the background. It should be painted as flat as possible, perhaps you can separate the color tone a little on the shadow on the table and on the background.