Before moving on to something else I spent half an hour this afternoon experimenting with the pears I painted yesterday… I’m quite happy with the progress from this dabbling, which included darkening the background a little and strengthening the colours.
I also added some texture and marks to the pears, helping to make them look a bit more three dimensional and realistic. It’s a shame that some of the shading is looking a bit black rather than echoing the colours of the pears. It’s made those areas look very washed out, as if the paint pushed the colour away in that area… this is interesting as the shadow colour was a mix of Magenta and Ultramarine Blue, not the neutral grey that it appears. Perhaps it’s because I flooded these colours into a wet wash beside the yellow and magenta rather than adding the shadows on top after the first wash had dried… I think I’ll have to try it again to find out ;-).