Painting 4

From the framing, you can probably tell that I'm proud of this painting. Again, it's a study of another painting, but this time I painted a water color, so while the essence of the original is there, there's still differences because of the different medium. This is a bad photo and doesn't really show the colors too well. I like the use of complementary colors, subject matter, and quirky composition. I'm not sure if the original had the pitcher in the middle, but I've learned than placing objects dead center on the canvas makes a bad painting, and the pitcher is dangerously close if not there. Another mistake I made was painting the 2 unpeeled oranges so identical in shape and size, and that draws too much attention to them. If you look at the shadowing on the table, you can see that I did not handle this correctly, First, light reflects off objects, so the blue of the plate should be reflected on the table, but I used a warm shadow. For the oranges, I used a cool, dark shadow. In real life, that should probably be reversed, with a warmer shadow on the oranges. How the pitcher is sitting on the table is a mystery since it seems so close to the edge, but the original had it that way and I like the tension it creates in the piece and that's why I call it quirky. I didn't foresake the reflections altogether. I did place a nice reflection of the lemons and the plate on the pitcher, unfortunately, the photo doesn't pick this up. But even with the obvious errors, I was happy with it and I have this one hanging over my kitchen sink. I certainly have learned from it, although the problems only became apparant after many viewings and following numerous art lessons. Sometimes a little time and distance help you see things in a whole new way.