watercolor pineapples

It's the summer of the pineapple. I'm totally on board with that. In fact, one of my favorite local treats is Pineapple Whip. Not only did I feel the need to document one of my (many) summer trips to the pineapple whip trailer with the hula girl on top (her name is Lulu by the way), I also felt like I needed to include a pineapple element on my layout. So why not a watercolor pineapple background?
But what if you can't really watercolor? Or what if the only watercolor set you have is from the kiddie section? Then you can totally do this :)

I used Studio Calico's July Penny Arcade kit and white cardstock for this. Of course watercolor paper would work beautifully as well. Start by grabbing your watercolors or watercolor papers and making yellow ovals, ovals that the top is a bit skinner and the bottom is a bit bigger. Make sure you aren't laying the watercolor on too thick. That's the beauty of watercolor--the translucent effect.

Next, add on some green tops. On each pineapple, I added 2-3 small green lines with my brush. Any kind of watercolor brush will do.  I happen to love these kind. They have the water in the handle so you can squeeze it in your paint, without having to have a separate water container. Who ever invented that is a genius.

Once the pineapples were dry, I used a black pen to add in dots. At this point I thought maybe that was all I would do. Then I decided...those look a bit like lemons. I needed to add something more pineappley. Yes, that is a word I just made up.

After practicing a few sketches on scrap paper, I went with a random assortment. Half the pineapples got the "v" treatment, while the other half got a few diagonal lines. I could have kept it all the same, but couldn't decide which I liked better. So I just did both. Makes it a bit less uniform and more interesting. No two pineapples are alike anyway so why should they be in watercolor form?

And the result, a unique background for a layout about a summer treat. I'm already dreaming about other watercolor fruits. How fun would this technique be on a card?
And with that, I need to make another Pineapple Whip run :)