From the Artist: I am self taught, never had a lesson, and would be very interested in your comments.
From the Painting Guide: I've used a graphics program to lighten the photo of the painting you sent, which was very dark and hard to see the level of detail in the apples. I haven't brightened it to the extent where you can really see the subtlety of the color because then the shadows disappear. I'm assuming that the cutting off of the top apple is just the way it was scanned/photographed.
I think this is a beautifully observed and captured still life; the only thing I'd suggest would be to use slightly more complementary color in the shadow on the surface, rather than just a neutral gray, so with the apples being red a bit of green. And depending on what the apples are resting on, perhaps a bit of reflected red too.
As an exercise in investigating the colors of shadows and reflected colors, set up the same composition with a red, green, and yellow apple. Have a look how the color of one reflects on the others – sometimes squinting helps makes this clearer. It can be hard to see colors in a shadow, so you might want to try it as an intellectual exercise first, putting a touch of the complementary in the shadow of each apple, and then looking at it again.
From the Painting Guide: I've used a graphics program to lighten the photo of the painting you sent, which was very dark and hard to see the level of detail in the apples. I haven't brightened it to the extent where you can really see the subtlety of the color because then the shadows disappear. I'm assuming that the cutting off of the top apple is just the way it was scanned/photographed.
I think this is a beautifully observed and captured still life; the only thing I'd suggest would be to use slightly more complementary color in the shadow on the surface, rather than just a neutral gray, so with the apples being red a bit of green. And depending on what the apples are resting on, perhaps a bit of reflected red too.
As an exercise in investigating the colors of shadows and reflected colors, set up the same composition with a red, green, and yellow apple. Have a look how the color of one reflects on the others – sometimes squinting helps makes this clearer. It can be hard to see colors in a shadow, so you might want to try it as an intellectual exercise first, putting a touch of the complementary in the shadow of each apple, and then looking at it again.