Still life... (just not as we know it >8) )

I attended my first art class on Tuesday evening (after delivering leaflets - delivering leaflets always comes in somewhere) and I began a still life in acrylics - a hat and a tomato. I didn't get to the tomato and I didn't really 'feel' the hat, at all, as an object. It ended up being a set of random, abstract colour that I didn't feel looked much like a hat.

The instructor said that I had a good grasp of tone. I learned how to draw angles using a pencil as a guide.

Yesterday, I decided to practice drawing the hat and tomato (in a slightly different position) from imagination using oilbars since I knew the lighting angle and the shape and colour of the hat because I had been drawing it all Tuesday evening. Again, this was on a really tidgy bit of canvas paper (I've now bought a larger pad... and a larger white oilbar since I seem to have eaten the way through about 1/4 of my white oilbar).

I still haven't quite mastered the hat. I didn't remember how the folded edge of the brim looked so it's not quite right, and the shading isn't quite correct. However, this is probably my best piece with the possible exception of Le Signore del e aumentato.