Push the painting further

When I thought I was nearly done with my second painting, my teacher said, "Push the painting further." She took my brush and smeared the edges and added more brush strokes to the center. She said my tones were good, but the objects had a quality of being there and not really there. She said that I should not define the objects. This second painting seemed to say, "Yes, I am a bottle." But the bottle should be brought out of the painting, not defined by me. I attempted to liven up the brush strokes and blend the edges a little more. I noticed that it added a little more 3-d quality. Here is the final product. I will post my nearly complete version next to the final version to see if a difference can be seen.

The nearly complete version:













The complete version:











I remember having to add a lot more paint on as well. It also gave me an opportunity to straighten the bottle necks. I'm still unhappy with the blue bottle in the back right hand corner though.

It was an interesting lesson in observing the relationship between things. An edge only appears to be an edge because two things come together. Particularly the sides of the bottles. Being too aware of the edges end up creating 2-d objects. I suppose the edge comes together when two colors meet. In my next painting I try to ignore the edges even more by just laying down the spots of color.