Introduction to Perspective, Lines, Shapes, Forms. Tips on beginning.

As a start (late), I used my newly acquired sketch pad and pencils to sketch out a couple of possible paintings using the shapes discussed in the lesson. To begin practicing the shapes discussed I sketched a pot with a single flower. The pot is based on the cylinder shape, the top of the pot the circle/oval and center of the flower the circle/oval, and the petals and leaves the triangle.

Next I practiced sketching a single apple:

I decided to start my first digital painting by just working on the apple. This is my first attempt at it, done in PSP 9:

I sent what I'd done to Hillary and based on her feedback I tried to improve on the apple by adding more highlight to the apple as well as more variation and highlights to the leaves. I also tried to fix that shadow on the right. Unfortunately, I forgot to save my work in psd format so had to make my corrections on one layer. In addition to that making it difficult to correct, it also resulted in more degradation with each compression of the image. With that, here's the corrected version:

I'm glad to be learning about painting, sketching and digital painting. Thank you, Hillary!