Art Log (September and October 2022)

Hey! In this blog post, I just wanted to share some digital still life art that I did in the month of October 2022. I started to paint still life to improve on my drawing and observational skills. So far it has been a lot of fun!

Below is the first proper digital still life piece I made of a pomegranate. It was a little hard to get the lighting and highlights right, but I'm really glad with how it turned out!

Next, I drew a pear. The challenge in this piece was painting the indents. I really had to look hard at the reference photo to get it down.

After that, I drew this capsicum that you see below. I'm really happy with how this one turned out because it's the most realistic looking still life I've ever painted. I'm particularly obsessed with how pretty the shadow looks!

The below painting is also a piece that came out very well. My favourite part was painting the lime, and the shadows of the fruits. The hardest part was drawing the light and shadows of the fabric; the hardest part was on the top right, which, as you can see, is oddly blank compared to the bottom and the left side. Many attempts were not enough to fix it so I gave up on it altogether! 😂 After all, it wasn't the focus of the painting. 

However, the fruit was the main subject of my painting, and not the fabric. I am planning on focusing more on painting fabric sometime in future. Regardless, I'm quite happy with how the fabric turned out in this painting. Better than I expected. Seeing it interact with the light and shadows of the fruits is also interesting to see.

I've taken it easy and took simple fruits on plain backgrounds and I'm planning to gradually increase the difficulty of what I paint. In the painting I'm currently working on, I've given equal importance both to the main subject and the fabric. I'm hoping to move on to painting fabric only, so that I can learn the dynamics of light and shadow on it. 

Some things I've learned from doing still life paintings is that it teaches you patience. If you want to make the painting as realistic and as accurate as possible, you have to do a lot of looking. Not to mention choosing the right colours, and blending. Observing is an important skill for an artist; it helps you to see what you haven't noticed at first glance!

If an artist wants to improve, beginning with still life is the best way to start out. 

Thanks for stopping by to read! I hope you enjoyed this post. Look forward to more posts on art and thought. 

See you in the next!