Still Life - Fruit Basket

The class at the Smithsonian for beginners in Acrylic painting has taught me a different perspective on painting. It's more than just looking at something and putting paint onto a canvas. It's about observing the color, shades, and lights that falls on an object in order for it to look three-dimensional. Coming from a science background, it is a new thing to observe colors and objects around me in this way. We were working on a still life in class the other day, and I just cannot get the draperies right. I can observe that there is a strong harsh line between the shades and the light, but when transferred on canvas, it just doesn't quite do it for me. My instructor told me that there is a blurring area in between the two harsh boundaries, but I really have trouble internalizing this information. Unfortunately I ran out of time on working on this piece in class, I will have to do some additional work on this before calling it complete.