Completed Tomato and Garlic Painting

I finally finished this painting (I think). I posted the earlier version here. I learned an important lesson from this one: tomatoes can be challenging to paint because you need to be able to give it shadows and highlights while still making sure it is clearly, entirely red. I think I re-did the tomato three times because first I would do the shadows and highlights too strongly and make it look like it wasn’t fully red anymore, or it would be too close to being a uniform red and look flat. Obviously, I need to paint more tomatoes, and with summer coming, that should be easy.

$75 | Original | 7" x 5" | Oil on Linen Panel

The other issue was that I did these from life, so of course every time I came back to it, the lighting had changed. That’s why I tend to work from photos…but I need to work from life sometimes too. It is different and fun. I just need to get faster.

I did take a photo of these two, but of course the lighting in the photo is completely different and they aren’t posed the same way anymore either.