From the Artist: "I probably should have put a background. It looks kind of bare. Also some shading or lighting on the leaves would be nice."
From the Painting Guide: It does look quite bare as it is at the moment and the leaves are rather flat, but remember that not every painting must be a finished, complete work, and that it's important to do studies to practice a particular technique or subject, which is what I would regard this as. So let's focus on the objective of this study, the water drops, and consider how successfully you've painted these.
The questions I'd ask are: do the water drops look three-dimensional, are they transparent, is the light direction consistent? And my answers would be: yes, the drops do look three-dimensional, like they're lying on the surface of the leaves, though some more than others. The drops do take their colour from the leaves they're lying on, which is important as water doesn't have a color of its own. But take a close look at the color of the drops on the center left leaf, where the green in the drops seems closer to that of the bottom leaf, rather than the leaf they're lying on.
Regarding the light direction, look at where the shadows on each drop is, trace a line back from this showing what direction the light is coming from, and now compare these for each drop and you'll see that you haven't been quite consistent. Unless it's reflecting off something, the sunlight on a group of leaves as you've got here would be from the same direction. If you're painting in a studio with artificial light, it's important in a subject like this to have one dominant light to imitate the sun.
Water drops are by no means an easy subject and I think you should be pleased with those you've done here. The next step would be to add detail and shadow to the leaves and the twig. I'd suggest you take just one leaf and do several studies of it; keep all of them, put them aside for a few days and then take a fresh look at what you've achieved.
From the Painting Guide: It does look quite bare as it is at the moment and the leaves are rather flat, but remember that not every painting must be a finished, complete work, and that it's important to do studies to practice a particular technique or subject, which is what I would regard this as. So let's focus on the objective of this study, the water drops, and consider how successfully you've painted these.
The questions I'd ask are: do the water drops look three-dimensional, are they transparent, is the light direction consistent? And my answers would be: yes, the drops do look three-dimensional, like they're lying on the surface of the leaves, though some more than others. The drops do take their colour from the leaves they're lying on, which is important as water doesn't have a color of its own. But take a close look at the color of the drops on the center left leaf, where the green in the drops seems closer to that of the bottom leaf, rather than the leaf they're lying on.
Regarding the light direction, look at where the shadows on each drop is, trace a line back from this showing what direction the light is coming from, and now compare these for each drop and you'll see that you haven't been quite consistent. Unless it's reflecting off something, the sunlight on a group of leaves as you've got here would be from the same direction. If you're painting in a studio with artificial light, it's important in a subject like this to have one dominant light to imitate the sun.
Water drops are by no means an easy subject and I think you should be pleased with those you've done here. The next step would be to add detail and shadow to the leaves and the twig. I'd suggest you take just one leaf and do several studies of it; keep all of them, put them aside for a few days and then take a fresh look at what you've achieved.