Falling in love

Red Apple-A Second Look--Sometimes I think painting is like falling in love.  You create this artwork and just love it.  And then with a little time to really study it--well, you see a few flaws or maybe something you can make a little better.  So you don't throw away the painting, you try to make adjustments and see if it'll work.  I think that most of the time there's a really good chance that it will make the whole better.

So I really loved my first pass at this painting and then thought--hmm,  a darker background could be really nice.  Let's try it!  I was pleased with the increased contrast and made a fairly good transition between the old background, new background, and the foreground shadows.  Always tricky in watercolor (or love!)  Would love your comments. 

Red Apple

This is a watercolor interpretation of my previous charcoal sketch.  I thought it would be fun to see how intense I could get the colors in watercolor, rather than oil, which is what I usually use for this type of subject matter.  The watercolor is definitely a much more indirect approach, with layering to build up the color.  This was a great exercise--I usually do watercolor with a wet into wet approach, so this made me work on the layering process.