Apples

I've never done proper tonal digital painting with my tablet, and considering how long I've had it for it's a bit of a joke really... This is the first thing I've painted that isn't like flat colouring/outlines/type illustration so hit me hard on technique and tell me what I need to do/not do/read/improve upon. So far I've worked out I need to work on my actual observational skills (shadows, shapes, getting accurate colours on-screen) and I need to figure out how to increase detail and decrease obvious brush strokes (especially the thinner ones). Left apple is a shop bought Braeburn and right apple is a small cooking apple from my neighbours tree... This took me about 7 hours :|

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...rawingcopy.jpg

I like it, the only thing that bothers me is the shading from the small apple onto the larger apple, it doesn't look like a curved surface, it's hitting it like it would a plane surface.

Not sure if this is what Gallagher was talking about, but the shadowed area where there's overlap between the two apples doesn't seem to fit in. It looks like the lighting is coming from the front/right. So with the right apple behind the left, the shading shouldn't be as pronounced.

Good job on the brushwork style.

nice work i gotta say...how much is a drawing palette of this?