Hi Liesbeth- shadows should just be a suggestion to help ground a subject and convey that it is sitting on a surface. Even though you are seeing that large, dark shadow you do not want to represent that on your page. As you have stated you recognize that the shadow is still too big and too dark. Your image of the fruit is off to a good start! The colors are very good! It looks like watercolor and it could benefit from some color pencil to smooth out the current mottling. As you can see in the photograph there is a irregular, whitish area that surrounds the white highlight so there is a transition out from the highlight. At the moment there is too much of an abrupt line between the highlight and the red color. Whether you are working at night or in a windowless room there is too much contrast being created by your lighting set up and I would play around with the lighting to create as natural lighting as possible. Evidenced in the photo by how dark the right side of the fruit is in addition to how dark your shadow is. I don’t know if you put a grisaille layer down before your color, but the fruit needs dark and mid-range toning on the right side and along the bottom to establish the fruits roundish form in addition to a reflected highlight. I recently posted a couple of pages from Wendy’s book on how to tone round forms, reflected highlights (your fruit is missing this) and shadows. I think you could find some great information there to help you with this drawing and moving forward. This drawing is really off to a good start and has a lot of potential!
Thank you for the feedback. I notice that shading still needs some work. This was done with underlying schadow and coloring watercolor pencils. I’ll keep practicing.
27 March 2020
Nice colors and more 3-dimensional form is happening here, Leisbeth! I think you could work on your highlight and shadows a bit more, like Doug said. Try lighting your subject in a few different ways; alter the light source until you see a smaller shadow, and observe how that changes the way you see the form, as well as where the highlight appears. You’re doing excellent work. Keep going!
After some erasing of the shade. Still a bit tricky…
Hi Liesbeth- shadows should just be a suggestion to help ground a subject and convey that it is sitting on a surface. Even though you are seeing that large, dark shadow you do not want to represent that on your page. As you have stated you recognize that the shadow is still too big and too dark. Your image of the fruit is off to a good start! The colors are very good! It looks like watercolor and it could benefit from some color pencil to smooth out the current mottling. As you can see in the photograph there is a irregular, whitish area that surrounds the white highlight so there is a transition out from the highlight. At the moment there is too much of an abrupt line between the highlight and the red color. Whether you are working at night or in a windowless room there is too much contrast being created by your lighting set up and I would play around with the lighting to create as natural lighting as possible. Evidenced in the photo by how dark the right side of the fruit is in addition to how dark your shadow is. I don’t know if you put a grisaille layer down before your color, but the fruit needs dark and mid-range toning on the right side and along the bottom to establish the fruits roundish form in addition to a reflected highlight. I recently posted a couple of pages from Wendy’s book on how to tone round forms, reflected highlights (your fruit is missing this) and shadows. I think you could find some great information there to help you with this drawing and moving forward. This drawing is really off to a good start and has a lot of potential!
Thank you for the feedback. I notice that shading still needs some work. This was done with underlying schadow and coloring watercolor pencils. I’ll keep practicing.
Nice colors and more 3-dimensional form is happening here, Leisbeth! I think you could work on your highlight and shadows a bit more, like Doug said. Try lighting your subject in a few different ways; alter the light source until you see a smaller shadow, and observe how that changes the way you see the form, as well as where the highlight appears. You’re doing excellent work. Keep going!