First of all I set a still life up of a fruit bowl on the table near a window for the light source. I then did a rough tonal sketch of the fruit bowl to get an idea of where the darkest to lightest tones were, squinting my eyes every so often and stepping away to view it.
I then started on my acrylic painting taking note of the areas of light and shade from my sketch. I tried to keep the detail and line of things fairly simple, focusing more on matching the right colours and tones of things. The pine table was slightly similar in colour to the bananas so I was worried how I could make the yellows more distinguishable. In the end I mixed a navy, medium yellow and white to get the colour of the bananas, adding brown spots and shade. For the table I did an ochre, white and medium yellow mix with brown lines to create a wood effect. I then moved on to the dish, it did prove to be quite hard to do, with getting the right colour to create shade. I used a mix of navy, brown and white in the end, highlighting with more white paint. I would say the bit I am least of all happy with, would be the apple. I tried to dull the red down a bit but I think this has had the effect of making it slightly flat and ball-like?
After my painting dried and I took the time to observe it a bit more, I came to the conclusion that the colours are not quite as bright as they should be. I think with future paintings I need to be careful to not mix things as much? adding too much white or dark colours like navy or brown can have the effect of dulling things down too much.
JenBavpaint 