03-20-2021, 05:31 AM
There will be many people out there enough to call your art shit or ignore it, no need to add to that sentiment yourself. 
Self talk actually effects everything we do, so it is good to be mindful of if you may be being overly negative or self deprecating lest it becomes an unintentional habit.
Anyways, nice to see some still life work being done, though I assume these are studies of paintings or photographs of setups? Highly useful exercise to do irl. These are pretty well executed quicker studies in any event.
One quick thing I'd advise for those still life ones is to pay more attention to your edge work. Realism of a naturalistic form relies on a good balance between the harder and softer edges. You use a lot of hard edges and could make use of more softer edges in your work to balance them out. Example is around the contour of a round form like the pomegranate, the contour around the fruit could be softened in areas to balance the harder edges and to emphasise form turning away in places. Lost edges can be introduced into places such as the shadow areas so things merge together and unify. An intentioned control of the edge balance in yourwork will help you show 3d volume better. Be very mindful of where light and shadow meet and what kind of edges are present and useful to show.
If you don't already, perhaps you can try and setup and paint a still life from life. This will help you to see volume better and by squinting your eyes, be able to observe and decide how to simplify your value massing/grouping as well as identify where the soft and hard edges are. The more you squint down the more unified subtle halftone values become and the hardest edges stay hard to your perception and easy to identify.
Self talk actually effects everything we do, so it is good to be mindful of if you may be being overly negative or self deprecating lest it becomes an unintentional habit.Anyways, nice to see some still life work being done, though I assume these are studies of paintings or photographs of setups? Highly useful exercise to do irl. These are pretty well executed quicker studies in any event.
One quick thing I'd advise for those still life ones is to pay more attention to your edge work. Realism of a naturalistic form relies on a good balance between the harder and softer edges. You use a lot of hard edges and could make use of more softer edges in your work to balance them out. Example is around the contour of a round form like the pomegranate, the contour around the fruit could be softened in areas to balance the harder edges and to emphasise form turning away in places. Lost edges can be introduced into places such as the shadow areas so things merge together and unify. An intentioned control of the edge balance in yourwork will help you show 3d volume better. Be very mindful of where light and shadow meet and what kind of edges are present and useful to show.
If you don't already, perhaps you can try and setup and paint a still life from life. This will help you to see volume better and by squinting your eyes, be able to observe and decide how to simplify your value massing/grouping as well as identify where the soft and hard edges are. The more you squint down the more unified subtle halftone values become and the hardest edges stay hard to your perception and easy to identify.