Still Life: Green Apples

Last night's still life was a struggle, but when I was completed, it was worth it. Working on a traditional bowl of fruit (in this case, apples), I started the painting by drawing the general shapes and massing the shadows/highlight areas.

Two of the basic tenets that I remembered from the last time was 1) Stand-up when painting and 2) Define the direction of the light. By standing up while I paint, I'm able to constantly move about 5 feet away from my painting to make sure that my massing of colors/values are correct. When I was sitting down, it was not that easy to do it. After about 3 hours of painting, standing up, my knees hurt, but I think that I could get used to it. The second tenet that I remembered was to define the light source. This allowed me to put the lightest color on the major light source area and the darker color on the areas outside of the light.

One of the things that I needed to work on, though, was to make sure that I linked my shadows across all of the objects. This is still a work in progress. I also had a difficult time getting the shape of the bowl correct. However, by standing several feet away from the painting, it was pretty easy to determine how to fix the painting.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the painting. The bowls and apples definitely have a rounded feel to them. The next area to also improve upon is the mixing of the appropriate colors.