So here is a render I did as the final project for my photorealism class at NAD center.
We had to take a still life painting and make it in 3D. I really love doing shading in Blender, it’s so intuitive and fast ! A real pleasure ! Hope you guys like it =) !
I did use a bit of photoshop to make color adjustment and add a bit of texturing (like the crack in the cracks in the cup). I could’ve done it directly within Blender but we were allowed to use photoshop for this).
I had one warm key light, one cool fill light, and a very subtle HDR for overall lighting. I also had to cheat and use a light above the lemon slice to make it shine a bit more. Without this light it looked horrible (like lemon clay…).
The shading in general and the structure of the cloth is utterly fantastic, I think you really nailed the photorealism on this one.
The only thing is that I’m trying to decide whether or not it would be nice to add a little whiff of steam coming out of the teapot, but that’s just being a bit of a nitpick at this point and the image is fine the way it is.