Sliced Fruit

  • Software:Photoshop CS6  ·
  • Difficulty:Beginner

Rules of the Exercise

  • 1
    Download and open the practice worksheet for this exercise.
  • 2
    Analyze the importance of strong, isolated highlights to create the impression of surface texture. Use the instructor notes to help understand the process.
  • 3
    Submit your work for this exercise.


  This exercise may seem juicy but this is a challenge to look at why each fruit gives the impression of a succulent produce. This 4 examples of fruit showcase how highlights can drastically alter and give some shine to the surface while being irregular to give the impression of texture. So it's important to build up solid foundations and values, for these to look real and not resembling plastic, it will come down to how you place the highlights!

  • Lemon - Variants of yellow is the challenge here. The placement of the values and saturation of yellow is what will give the accurate appearance of a lemon. The secondary challenge are the areas of the pulp are exposed versus the areas that are still encased in the "skin". The highlights are more muted or dulled down on the skin.
  • Orange - Similar to the lemon, but this one is deceivingly simple. Since it's broken up in different segments, you would like they are all the same, but the slight differences are what will be the task to focus on and placing the highlights correctly
  • Kiwi - The Kiwi introduces the challenge of including and implanting seeds. You want to focus on how some seeds will be seen on the surface while others will be lodged in the fruit affecting the visibility and clarity.
  • Watermelon - The final fruit takes a different approach since the highlights are smaller and you want to depict the texture a watermelon has while adding subtle highlights. The transition from pink to green is not a simple gradient. Observe how the color fades irregularly and capture that!

Below is the practice worksheet that you can download! You can find this on the "Downloads" tab under the header image near the top of this exercise! 



  As Always with Studying from Life: REFERENCE. Organics are fun to work with but can prove to be a challenge if you don't build the foundation right. So we are looking at these four fruit and you have an outline provided. Take these and first look for reference either with the ones we took below or the internet contains most anything you are looking for. Sometimes it helps taking the reference pictures yourself or having the subject matter in front of you. The reference was taken from fruit I set up with the light source coming overhead and from an angle. I also color picked from the reference to create a palette for you to help with color picking. Sometimes when you need reference of a specific angle and lighting, GO GET IT YOURSELF =D  I went to the store, picked up what i needed, and set up a good setting for the pictures to be taken. See below to see what I mean! e39_fruit   e39_fruitrefsheet These observation exercises are great ones to strengthen your understanding of highlights and how to add them in. Sometimes it may even look confusing why it's reflecting in certain areas but that's part of the process in learning accuracy with your results.


  This was certainly a juicy exercise filled with a lot of finer detailing and a closer look at how isolated highlights can really add an effect to the final product. I used the skin and pore brush from the CG Cookie Brushes to produce the sliced fruit results. For the step by step after I create an outline of each fruit, and begin to lay down a foundation of solid colors. This helps create a value to work on top of and gives a color grounding.

  1. Outline – Begin with the overall look and shape to each sliced fruit, remembering to take your time defining the important shapes such as seeds or a separation in pulp.
  2. Solid Base - Choose a solid base color from a reference and work more neutral or even closer to a darker value to build upon.
  3. Secondary Base Colors - I wanted to showcase a secondary base color to work from since there is such a distinction in color for this subject matter.
  4. Build up Forms and Values - With a lighting direction in place, start to build up the values and this is what will begin the transition from not looking so flat but rather having some depth.
  5. Remove Outline and Refine - Once you have gotten enough form to work with, you can remove the outline layer and begin to define the detail work and clean up the areas that were previously covered from the line art.
  6. Polish with Strong Highlights - This is the most important stage. This is when the fruit adds a sense of realism and more importantly a sense of it looking "juicy" Keep the highlights consistent with the light direction and have fun watching your fruits come alive!

E39_SlicedFruitResults When you finish the exercise, remember to submit the result to the "Submissions" tab near the top of this exercise. You can see other submissions alongside your own!