Hey Rayan! Great painting! Still life is one of the best subjects for improving oil painting. If you look at most traditional schools you will see that they start students out with still life. But, it's not what you paint that will help you improve faster it's how you analyze what you have painted that is the key. In your post you've already pointed out exactly what needs the most work, drapery. The key to super fast improvement is identifying what your most weak at and practicing that specifically until you've improved to the level you want. Then go on to the next thing you see needs the most work. If you consistently find your weaknesses and systematically eliminate them your improvement will be exponential. Iteration is extremely good at helping you to improve faster. If you find something you need to work on, like drapery, don't work on a huge painting of draper. Instead do a bunch of smaller paintings and iterate on each. For each painting identify what you did well, what you can improve and define how you can improve it on the next painting, then do it. Couple other improvements you can make right away. First, when you're painting that small you want to keep the texture of the canvas smooth so that it doesn't interrupt the painting so much. You can gesso any canvas and sand in between layers to keep it smooth. Or painting on some gessoed boards. Second, your able to see the form of hard edge objects well. That cube is well done! But it's the organic/rounded objects that are challenging you. Look at the manechinization exercises from Proko's figure drawing course as an example of how you can simplify complex organic forms into boxes. This will help you get a better undertanding of all forms not just ones that are already geometric. I hope that helps! Keep posting your paintings I would like to see how you improve.

I think this is a great painting, I love the brushwork. I found the reference online, a couple of things I noticed. The right side of your reference face is a big beautiful shape of light . I think you could have lifted the values of the right side of her face a bit for improved contrast. Marco Bucci have a great video on this, using Sargent as an example. Good Shapes - 10 Minutes To Better Painting - Episode 4 A couple of suggestions I would work on. 1. I think this shape is too bright, it created to much contrast. Check you reference how the value of this shape is darker than the light areas. 2. The mouth ended being a little bit off, I think you need to push it a little bit to the right. 3. I think the shapes of her cheeks ended being to sharp, maybe it was on purpose, I kinda like it. But I feel like the cheeks in the reference are much more smooth. 4. I think the upper eyelid ended being too flat, but this is easily fixable. I really liked the painting overall, great study!

Ah! And as for your question about drawing “plen-air”: it’s natural and totally okay to feel shy, anxious and even scared at first, but if this is something you want to do, don’t let your fear of other people’s judgements hold you back. As we get more familiar with drawing outside, the process becomes enjoyable and we relax more. James Gurney’s blog links, which @paper posted below, are a really nice read! Personally, I love drawing in public and do it whenever I can. In my experience, no one ever came to mock me or bully me because of my drawings or something like that (and my sketchbook is honestly really messy). On the contrary, I’ve found that, when people (especially kids) notice I’m drawing, they get curious, sometimes they want to see it up close, or they’ll just pass by and smile at me. When people come to look, it’s usually just because they wanna see what it is, how it’s done, and, often, they wish they could do it too. Children tend to just watch curiously, with a few exceptions for more extroverted kids who also like to ask questions or even request me to draw something, haha! Most adults who realize I’m drawing probably won’t say anything, but a few might feel confident enough to chat - it turns out that drawing outside can be an effective way to have bystanders start casual conversations with us. 😁 I’ve had mostly pleasing experiences letting people talk to me about my drawings, but, if it ever gets annoying, I’ll just say an excuse and move to another spot.

Hey, @Rayan Khlaif! I agree with @paper, this is really good stuff - no wonder you’ve passed the high school program you applied to! 😄 Congratulations, hope you have a wonderful time there! The experience of putting together a portfolio to apply for high school might be helpful when the time comes for you to apply to college. By the way, I did a quick browsing through the Florence Classical Arts Academy’s website and it looks like they’re receptive to students of various ages and levels - this should be a good sign! On the site, I saw they offer an online course - have you taken a look at how it works? Maybe, if someone your age could be eligible for it, this could be a nice way to start getting closer to the institution, teachers, colleagues, and also to keep your practice sharp and in tune with the “spirit” of the academy you wanna go to before you actually apply to their main program. I think another good next step (in case you haven’t done this already) is to do some research on what exactly you’ll need in terms of skills and portfolio in order to apply. You might wanna take a thorough look at the Academy’s website, find out what are the requirements. Maybe you could even try contacting someone at the institution through email in case any doubts show up? Sometimes, assistants at the dean’s office or administration will be happy to help with future students’ inquiries. Also, you could estimate in how much time from now you’d be able to apply, then you could plan a schedule for yourself based on a defined period and on specific topics you’ll need to have learned or pieces you’ll need to have produced by then. Doing this on your own is something that could work well if you’ve been doing fine studying on your own up to today. Alternatively, you could also try getting an art mentor. If you’re able to find an instructor or experienced artist where you live to have as your mentor, that’s great. If not, you could consider online mentoring programs. One that I‘m guessing might be a good fit for your interests is New Master’s Academy coaching: https://coaching.nma.art I took three months of it a few years ago and it was nice to have a highly skilled instructor periodically recommend study material and directly give customized feedback on my work. The instructor I was assigned to back then was Iliya Mirochnik - nice guy with a solid background on the Russian school. Since you have interest in the Russian approach, he might be one to consider as your mentor in case you might become interested in this possibility. Ultimately, I’d strongly suggest to open-mindedly discuss with your parents all your goals, dreams and actions you might wanna take. If they’re open, you might wanna invite them to do this research and planning thing with you. Hopefully, you’ve already talked to them and they are willing to back you up - family support is priceless and can make the difference in how we face the challenges along the journey. Hope this helps! Sorry it got too long. 🙂 Let me know if you have questions or would like discuss anything else. Best of luck!

I'd say those are pretty serious for a 15yo (well at least for me I never did do drawing and painting practices until later). In terms of what to do next... Well, it's not really a technique question, but what you find yourself craving for, because at one point you can more or less draw anything you want, so it's not what matters, it's what you want to express, or the kind of experience you are looking to get through art, or in a way it may not be visual art.

I'm no expert so please ignore my advice if it is not relevant to what you would like to do in the future. But I would say you have a strong grasp on form, lighting and the colours on the fruit paintings are really nice. So i would say to study anatomy if you would like to progress with working on figure drawings/characters OR you could learn more about colour theory if you would like to progress with your paintings! hope you figure out what you would like to do!! :D

Hello Rayan_Khlaif,these are very stunning work,I quite love the dirtiniess in the watercolor pieces you did.(I am quite fond of the tomatoes and the first {is that fisherman?} painting you did) I don't have much to say to these painting since they're very good.But if I were to be forced a critique is that on drawing no 3,your ear isn't as define as the other feature?It does kinda have that sketchy quality that John singer sargent have with his drawings(see below)But I'm wondering if you just havent study the face as much as say still lifes,since I don't see any other portrait drawing beside that (Please correct me below if you have and this was supposed to be a sketch) if your goal is to become a portrait painter,I suggest copying Vanderpoel page on feature just so you can have a better grasp of how light hit the face (though if your goal is to become a still life painter,then feel free to ignore all this) I also want to say that the composition on no 7 isn't as good as no 6,but I'm guessing since you were going for a master study you were aiming for something else? as for what to study next,I guess if you're going for still life,I would suggest challenging yourselves by painting reflective surface such as vases and metals and actually now that I think about it,try to make your own composition with still life since the one you posted seemed to be studies.(also this might answearing something out of the question but I suggest looking up todd m casey and jeff watts for how they do their still life composition) I'm sorry that this ended up being just very minor nitpick,it's just very hard to critique something that's really good.Anyway,you're doing great,please keep going and best regards on your art journey :D