Help with lighting and volumes needed

JR

Hi guys. I've been painting for a while, but I observe that my ability to make correct lighting and sensation of volume it's not as good as I'd like. So I started to make some small paintings of ridiculous simple things and characters to see if I could figure out how to get better on these fundaments.

I'm posting some studies here, to receive some feedback, if possible. you can be harsh, no problem. Comments, tips or paintovers will be really welcome.

SuPa-

Hey man these are pretty good! I like the style you have going. But if what you're doing is aiming to work on your understanding of basic lighting I'd suggest you do some works based off of still lifes. Either find some pictures online or set up your own

Two Listen

The first one I'm not really sure what to say about, why are there such stark blacks just sort of in the middle of everything? I can tell they're supposed to be shiny but the black confuses me, with shiny/reflective shit - more often than not you utilize your background in the reflections to portray their shapes. With just that gray background they look pretty out of place, I think.

The second one's actually pretty good, I think if anything your edges are a bit stark/flat, but other than that it reads well.

The third one suffers primarily from perspective issues, moreso than anything else I'm noticing.

The fourth one is pretty neat, it reads well and gets the idea across. I think you could probably shape it up a little bit and fix some rendering here and there - again certain edges stick out at me, but it's tough one especially with that blue background and just the nature of the character as a whole so I wouldn't worry on it too much.

Thing I might second SuPa, if you're looking to get better with that sort of thing, probably work on some things more familiar to you, using reference if you can. Things to avoid right now? Maces.

JR

thank you for the tips, guys.

Two Listen, here's the reference i used for the first one:

Two Listen

Wow. Guess you got pretty close then, 'eh?

...probably better in the future to find reference of a pot that's in an environment of some sort, though. Studying how reflective materials interact with both the viewer's eye and the environment is probably the most important thing to study about reflective materials. At least, that's what I've discovered from personal (that is to said, devoid of any professional) experience.

JR

One more attempt. This time I tried to give a more organic look to the resin statue.

JR

And two more. I don't know about you, but I see some improvements!