Still Life Study: Apple

After reading an interesting post about what NOT to do as an artist, one of the comments was that you shouldn't wait to paint every 2 - 3 weeks. Not if you want to be a good artist. So, taking that to heart, I'm going to try to step up my painting schedule. Since I have limited time and need to work on my still life studies/realistic painting skills, I have plenty of small setups to paint.

So, last night, I started on an apple. The last time that I did an apple, the colors of the apple were wrong, etc. This time, I decided to do some work on just values.

In this setup, the light is setup directly above the apple and the apple is on a fairly reflective table. The hardest part of this painting was to ignore the secondary light sources from my light above my easel. I had to continuously turn on/off the light to remove the highlights. However, it is interesting to note that the table showed greatly on the non-lit side of the apple. As I was painting, I was making sure that the reflected light on the shadow side did not produce areas that were brighter than the darkest part of the lit side.

Overall, for an initial value study, this was okay. Had some issues with the drawing of the apple and getting the shape right. However, that's why I need the practice.