Studies of minerals in watercolor
2yr
Rayan Khlaif
Hi! I painted these stones for my art school homework and I would love to hear a critique from someone else than only my teacher.
All of them are painted from life btw. (Amethyst, pyrite and aragonite)
Hey Rayan,
Nice life studies. Remember, as artist we don't just copy what we see, a camera can do that, we design what we want others to see. In other words, we control what the viewer sees by manipulating things like color saturation, contrast, edges, etc.
The first image for example, everything has the same saturation, and the area of greatest contrast is the shadow. It is hard to even distinguish the amethyst from the rock. To fix this, I suggest you increase the saturation and contrast and add some highlights so that it pops out to the viewer. Softening some of the edges of the things that are not so important will also direct the eye to the subject better.
I included a quick example to show you what I mean, hope it helps :)