Hi Beth- this is a good practice page. The one thing I notice on your cherries and leaves is that most of them are outlined. The area of a subject that is on the highlight side is not going to have a dark edge like it would on the shaded side. The two leaves in the middle of the page are your most successful. Of those two the leaf on top could use a little more toning on the left side of the main vein. On your overlap exercises (cylinders and roots) be aware not to tone both sides of the bottom cylinder/root where a top piece crosses over it. The side furthest from your light source is going to have a dark shadow and the lit side will have little or no shadows. Roots can be more complicated and have exceptions. You can especially see on the cylinder exercise on the top left that by equally shading both sides of the bottom cylinder it makes it appear as if the bottom cylinder is carved out and the top cylinder is nestled into it. If the shading is done on the dark side only it will appear as if the top cylinder is sitting on top of the bottom cylinder, which is the object of the exercise. You can even cross one finger over another and see that the shadows are as I have described above.
12 February 2020
Great practice here, and I agree with Doug. In general, you could work on making leaf veins more subtle (but that can wait until you reach Practice of Botanical Drawing Lesson 3) 🙂 You could also close in on those highlights a bit more, so we see a gradual transition from dark to light. Right now, those round fruits are missing some midtones; the dark shadow jumps quickly to a light tone; that transition could be smoother and will create more contrast with the very white highlight. Great work!
Hi Beth- this is a good practice page. The one thing I notice on your cherries and leaves is that most of them are outlined. The area of a subject that is on the highlight side is not going to have a dark edge like it would on the shaded side. The two leaves in the middle of the page are your most successful. Of those two the leaf on top could use a little more toning on the left side of the main vein. On your overlap exercises (cylinders and roots) be aware not to tone both sides of the bottom cylinder/root where a top piece crosses over it. The side furthest from your light source is going to have a dark shadow and the lit side will have little or no shadows. Roots can be more complicated and have exceptions. You can especially see on the cylinder exercise on the top left that by equally shading both sides of the bottom cylinder it makes it appear as if the bottom cylinder is carved out and the top cylinder is nestled into it. If the shading is done on the dark side only it will appear as if the top cylinder is sitting on top of the bottom cylinder, which is the object of the exercise. You can even cross one finger over another and see that the shadows are as I have described above.
Great practice here, and I agree with Doug. In general, you could work on making leaf veins more subtle (but that can wait until you reach Practice of Botanical Drawing Lesson 3) 🙂 You could also close in on those highlights a bit more, so we see a gradual transition from dark to light. Right now, those round fruits are missing some midtones; the dark shadow jumps quickly to a light tone; that transition could be smoother and will create more contrast with the very white highlight. Great work!