Photoshop Digital Painting Exercise 01: Black and White Apples

Yesterday I had my first session with Jordan where we learnt about digital painting in Photoshop using a graphics tablet, we were told to paint the left image. Despite me working better with colour over black and white I think I did a good job. 

Jordan showed me a tool that traps transparent pixels (can be found next to the word lock above layers) and this allows you to work the same as a clipping mask without having two layers, this helped me achieve a more realistic feel. The background I did by applying a texture and gradient overlay. I paint by starting with block colours and working over that adding more detail in layers then I clean up edges.

Below are some work in progress images.