Keeping Watch over the Rainbow Fruit

This was one of the projects this week at the Chris Leeper watercolor workshop.  His challenge on this one was to do a painting using 3 primary colors - a blue, a yellow and a red.  I used Pthalo Blue, Quindacridone Red, and Cadmium Yellow medium.   It is amazing that you can get such a wide range of colors with just 3 colors - even the saturated darks (which used a lot of paint! :)   We were allowed to select our own source pictures so I selected this still life from the reference library at WetCanvas.com.    After layering in the dark background, I found that I had to go back into the fruit and add more color because the dark background faded out the colors.  This is painted on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper and is on 1/4 sheet of paper.