“You are your own worst critic” is something I hear from time to time. That is actually a positive trait, because who else is going to be completely honest to help me improve my work?

Today’s post is one to help me think about how to make this painting be the best possible. This painting is a conglomeration of a stack of many photos, in an attempt to make it the most colorful that I can.

These are my thoughts as I study the painting:

1. The two pomegranates look good, which makes sense because I’ve painted many pomegranates.
2. The orange needs a bit more brightening.
3. The tangerine is a good idea, but doesn’t look quite right; maybe it is Sumo, maybe a mineola tangelo. (Are those even grown anymore?)
4. The hidden plum is a little weird with that highlight–maybe it should just go dark.
5. The upper left plum looks almost finished, only lacking some highlighting on the left side.
6. The grapes need more variety in their color, along with highlights on the left edges.
7. The lemon needs better color, highlights on the left, detail in the stem. (I took away the shading from a previous iteration because the light source was on the wrong side.)
8. The persimmon looks too red here, but that might be the way it photographed. Worth checking. It needs detail in the green thingie, called a “sepal”, and the green is wrong.
9. Both pears need detail; the yellow one has been shrunk and only has a base coat, and the green one lost its freckles.
10. The peach needs fuzz and it needs those ghost grapes to get buried.
11. It won’t take long to finish the apple.
12. The background needs the glow to be more subtle so it doesn’t look like a halo around the plum and grapes.

Good thing there is no deadline on this. It’s a great exercise in making things up and keeping them believable. It is also a great exercise in patience, in reining in my natural bent to git-‘er-dun. So much in life is better when we see it as an opportunity to learn rather than a nuisance.

Here you can see I improved the background, light on the upper plum and grapes, the tangerine, persimmon sepal, the flower ends of the pomegranates (in spite of thinking they were finished), the green apple. Of course, it is wet and shiny so doesn’t photograph well.

Perhaps I am my own best critic, rather than worst critic?