Another Italian Job by Mary Davies

Hi Mary. Generally, this is a bright, lively painting. Colour and tonal values are all relative. Actually, there is plenty enough colour in this picture for my personal taste. However, having established your darkest darks behind the tomato and the large leaf, I feel that you could have been a little bolder with the relatively dark shadow areas under the tomato as well. A little more value in the shadow side of the tomato (whilst retaining some of the reflected light underneath it) would also help express the sense of its volume - as would have a little more attention to the shadows cast by the stalk onto the body of the tomato. A heavier paper would have certainly enabled you to build up more layers of value (colour and tone). However, I do think this is a lively painting that, overall, expresses the subject rather well. Malcolm Cudmore.
 
Malcolm Cudmore