Still life that could also use some critique

[André Girão Tauffer]

 

That’s a still life I did recently, could use some wild critiques! Thanks in advance for any help provided

[André Girão Tauffer]

Please click in the image to see it full resolution.

[Mengu Gungor]

Hi André, this is a wonderful painting. I really like the saturated orange from the reflected light, and the magentas you used in the wine glass. You also did a great job on the textures both of the fruits and the glass. Three things I’d point out… First is the tangent the orange makes with the edge of the table. This is something we want to avoid compositionally, and can easily be done by lowering the edge of the table. Second is the uniform space between your objects. I would probably have placed the orange a little behind or a little in front of the lemon, with their forms overlapping, so you could show more depth. And third I’d check your ellipses for the wine glass. They all seem to have about the same width, which makes the scene a bit isometric and surreal. Your horizon line is clearly above the wine glass. The glass opening should be the narrowest ellipse since it’s closes to the horizon, and they should get wider as they go down. This will indicate better perspective. Also the ellipse for the wine is a little pointy at the ends, should probably be a bit more rounded. Hope that helps, and as I said, I really like your colors and textures on this. Keep on painting.

[André Girão Tauffer]

Wow, thank you Mangu, some really interesting points there! I knew something was bothering me with this orange and table tangent but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. In fact in the original composiotion the orange was slightly bigger making this tangent less obvious, but I ended up eating the borders a bit with the background to fix the shape and didn’t realize the change in time.

Yeah, I like the idea of maybe having the orange a bit behind the lemon, it would be also a nice contrast and as you said give a better sence of depth.

Now that you mentioned the ellipse perspective issue I’ll never be able to look at this painting without noticing it hahaha.

That said I will probably come up with another layer for this to try and get the ellipses right and move the table edge a bit down. I don’t think I’ll mess with the placements now, but if I’m feeling bold maybe I’ll add darker object behind the lemon or orange for the depth, but I’ll probably not risk it.

Thanks again Mangu, you gave me a lot to think about!

[Joshua Jacobo]

Nice work! I agree with Mengu on all of that. Also, you have even spacing between the objects and the left right top and bottom of the frame. That makes the picture more static. There is equal spacing between the objects. Again, static and there’s no overlapping. I would look at the arrangement and try to think of ways to make it more dynamic and more convincing as a 3d space. The color of the backdrop and table also are quite flat.

[Annie Survis]

I don’t think anyone else has suggested this, but I think a “wild” idea would be to swap the color temps of the backgrounds in the bottom and the top. If the top was warm colors, and the bottom cooler colors, I just think it would be interesting against the objects in the foreground. 🙂

[André Girão Tauffer]

Thanks Joshua, for your input. Yeah, I see what you mean, this even spacing makes me feel the positioning is kind of symmetric, which is quite boring. Yeah, I can imagine it being more dynamic, but I’ll reserve it to my next still life. Yes, also agree about the colors, this I think I’ll try changing in a next layer for this one. Now that I’m looking at the shadows in my table I see a nice gradation I could have explored but didn’t, yet.

[André Girão Tauffer]

Wow Annie, that does sound wild. I think you’re right that the contrast would actually improve against the objects in the foreground, however, I think I’ll try less of a contrast between the table and the wall, and more of a value change. Then maybe turn everything closer to the wall color than the table. Thank you for your input!

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