light on oranges

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Comment by Justine Wardle on March 24, 2012 at 13:53

Nice work Karen. Maybe you could of used a subtle warm red in the back ground instead of the yellow and brought the red across transitioning into the blue in the background. Might of worked better with the grapes. Justan idea spotted when looking at the photo. Your not the only worried if you placed you comments in the rigth place.  Took me a while to navigate also.

Comment by Karen Sheppard on March 24, 2012 at 13:01

Thanks Dorian and Susie. I really appreciate that you have taken the time to comment. Richard, I am still trying to work out exactly where things are on the website. I hope I put my thanks for your commentary in the right place.

Comment by susie gregory on March 24, 2012 at 1:09

nice job karen...and i agree with richard about lost edges...once you get the hang of it, you'll know where you can do it - mostly - where the values are close, the edge can be lost, where there's a sharp value change, the edge needs to be sharp...squint, squint....according to the photograph, you could almost lose an edge on the handle somewhere...

Comment by Richard Robinson on March 23, 2012 at 16:06

Design

I love your design Karen, it's lovely to have the grapes flowing over the plate and leading the eye to the glowing orange segment. Good use of dramatic lighting - it's almost ethereal and perhaps you could have brought a little more light into the shadowed area on the left by rotating the orange segment there clockwise so that its right side was catching the light. As it is at the moment your two segments are very much the same shape where you had an opportunity to add a little more variety. That's being pretty picky but same shapes are something I try to avoid in my own arrangements.
 

Colour

You're getting somewhere now. Nice contrast between warm and cool overall, and you've noted some subtle difference within those too. A few things you could look at are the value of the pith in both the orange segments - it's too light which is destroying the illusion of shadow there. Squint squint! In the teapot you have a nice subtle cool to warm transition but perhaps the light is not quite light enough? It's great to see you casting reflected light from the orange segment on the right and that's something I encourage you to keep playing with. In the teapot you may have missed the opportunity to reflect the red grapes into the shadow side which would have made a nice counterpoint to the grey blue there.

The orange light in the background fabric is striking from a distance but you've lost a little realism there by excluding some cooler grays in there, and the orange colour is so strong there it really takes the eye away from the subject of the painting. Similarly it looks to be a little too cool in the shadowed backdrop on the left and might have been more balanced including some slightly warmer notes in there.
 

Brushwork

Your brushwork has a nice feminine fluidity about it in some parts, however a lot of it is overworked - many brush strokes where one would suffice, flattening the paint and muddying the colour. That's only going to improve with brush miles and you're already doing so well so keep it up! Consider using a larger brush, more paint and be aware of painting value planes as described in the first still life workshop.
 

Realism

Well you can see yourself you're getting there. The grapes look pretty convincing as do several other portions of the painting, and your drawing is not too shabby. One thing you might try next time is losing some edges. For instance you could lose all that detail under the plate where it joins the table - just blur it together. Similarly in the photo the left side of the big orange is nearly the same value as the background so there's another opportunity to lose an edge. Same story in the big shadow area of the grapes - you've delineated every single grape which is not strictly necessary. Some things to think about. Hope that helps.

Comment by Dorian Aronson on March 20, 2012 at 18:39

Hi Karen

Very nice painting, a lot of hard work here.  Smiles to you........dor:))