A Series of Disappointing Events, Part 1: Still Life

People love a train wreck, as long as they are not in it, so I figure people might come along for this ride.
I decided to take a leap into still lifes (yes, that is the correct plural, not "lives") because I thought that I should push myself to try something more difficult than what I have been doing.
With a photo, the 3-D world has already been translated into two dimensions for you. Then, all you have to do is paint exactly what you see, beautifully flattened for your convenience.
With a still life, you have to try to make your eyes do what the camera does. I think that is the reason for that old visual of the artist making a frame with his hands and looking through it.
So I grabbed a plant and a tangelo, put them on a table, turned on a lamp, and went at it.
I like the colors, but I do not like the overall result. As with anything I am trying for the first time, I think my painting looks timid. Instead of looking closer, I think the tangelo just looks enormous.
Maybe this explains why I like close-ups. You only have to paint one thing and don't have to worry about perspective and the size of anything else.

NEXT: "Adventures in Oil-based Crayons," or "Yet Another Thing I Don't Know How to Do"