Story behind the art of Etsuko Yamane

28th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art & Garden Center

Hikawa Hakuhou

Prunus persica 'Hikawa Hakuhou'

Hikawa Hakuhou is a popular early-ripening peach variety in Japan, with its peak season beginning in early July. I am a big peach lover, and I always look forward to this time of year. As the first peach to appear on the market, Hikawa Hakuhou signals the arrival of peach season.

The flesh of Hikawa Hakuhou is low in fiber, juicy, and has a smooth texture. It’s wonderfully sweet and delicious, with low acidity and a high sugar content.

I depicted this ripe peach as a beautifully rounded fruit with a milky white surface tinged with pink. The delightful aroma of the peach filled the air throughout the painting process. In this artwork, I focused on expressing the texture of the peach skin and the fruit's structure.



I applied color to achieve the texture of the peach skin using the following steps:

First, I laid down an underpainting to express the shape of the sphere. For the central part, I smoothly applied an advancing, warm color that was suitable for the fruit's skin. I mixed cadmium yellow lemon, pyrrole red, and olive green in a 5:3:1 ratio and diluted it with a lot of water. For the contours, I used a receding, cooler color, blurring the edge where it met the central area. I prepared the shadow color by mixing a small amount of carmine into neutral tint and diluting it generously with water.

Next, I layered on a peach-like color. Where light hit, I built up shadows bit by bit with dry brushstrokes over the light gray base to create the fine, downy texture of the peach fuzz. For the center of the peach, I applied a light salmon pink. For the contours, I smoothly applied muted pale colors to express depth. The color I used for drybrush was a mixture of carmine and Prussian blue in a 10:1 ratio.

In the final stage, I made fine color adjustments across the entire peach. For the central part of the subject, I layered a light color made by adding a little cadmium yellow lemon to the advancing color. For the shadow areas, I adjusted the mixture of paint and applied it using a drybrush technique. Through these steps, I expressed the spherical form and skin texture of the peach.

For the fruit's structure, I cut along the peach's suture or line to depict a cross-section. This shows that the peduncle is connected to the pit inside the fruit, and from the pit's surface, fibers extend into the flesh. These pathways allow nutrients to fill the fruit, resulting in a sweet and juicy peach. The pit itself is composed of two joined shells, containing the seed within.



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