[John Zeissig]

Dear Sharon,

In a way I am a seasoned pro, so you are right to tell it like it is. I've been exhibiting my work for twelve years now, both in juried competitions and occasionally at commercial galleries. I've had some sales, done twenty-something commissioned pieces, won some prizes, etc.. In brief, I've been taking advantage of the opportunities available to someone with no formal art training and decades of developing bad habits, but with a great passion for art. It's just that I've rarely exhibited my paintings, for a lot of reasons that probably don't matter.

I've had experience on the other side of the art industry as well. For two years, in fact, I was on the exhibition committee for a very large arts organization in the San Francisco bay area, where I live. Picture this: a middle-aged guy who thinks he can make it as an artist (and is desperate to exhibit his own work) finds himself looking at slides and proposals from all over the world, curating shows, deciding who gets shown and who doesn't, and dealing with the charming eccentricities of the artists. My naive notions about the art world were irreversibly changed.

Given that background, I want to let you know that your comments are exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for. I include Mark and Denise and Mari in this as well. The observations on the eye and skin tones are all well taken. When you give or get a critique it's like an engineering problem. If something isn't working, you point out the problem along with suggestions for a solution. Usually there is a specific fix or an improvement that can be made, if not on this painting then on the next one. It does nobody any good to gloss over bad passages or withold critical comments for fear of hurting somebody's feelings. That would defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. Furthermore, a painting can be flawed, even deeply flawed, and still be good: not a masterpiece maybe, but good. In any event, it's necessary to display the work and pay attention to the response; close the loop by correcting the mistakes and present the revised work for another round. It works the same way in science or art or anything else I can think of where people do things with purpose. The process requires candor on everyone's part. In my case, I think I'm approaching the stage where I'm going to need some workshop or atelier training: because its difficult to apply these suggestions without having someone point out what's missing at the crucial time, rather than after the mistake has insinuated itself into the work.

I don't think the skin tone problem is as acute in this painting as the image in the post might suggest, but I think you've all spotted it. I spent a lot of time today going to portrait websites and downloading images. I've been blowing them up and looking at the actual pixel distributions in the areas of fleshtones at different values. There's a lot of talk about greens and blues and a multiplicity of colors in these areas, but precious little evidence of it in the pixels. Occasionally I'll find some solid green in the deepest shadows, but it usually requires 4X magnification or greater to really begin to see the hues: below that and they just look black. I've no reason to doubt that people are painting the way they say they are painting, so something is going on that causes those tones to be lost in the digitization. I've got the suspicion that the dithering algorithms that come into play when resizing an image are favoring the reds and yellows on downsizing. This is really apparent when I put a painting next to the monitor and compare it to smaller images on screen. The smaller the image the more orange it seems to be. If this is the case it limits interpretation of subtle coloration based on website posts.

I'm definitely going to switch to the Portra the next time I do any photography. You're absolutely correct about the contrast here being too high. I can't do too much about lighting right away as I don't have a proper studio, but I'm sure the film change will help things. I do paint from life when I can get cooperation. Situations like this Kim portrait with the direct sunlight make it very hard to arrange. I'm definitely taking your advice about doing some small head studies; it's a perfect time for that. On Jonathan's Vermeer website: I neglected to mention that when I started painting Kim he had just started the web page and the lessons after the underpainting section were not posted yet. I got way ahead of him and finished the painting before he posted the local color section or any of the rest. Not a very patient student, am I? Still, he was very helpful to me via e-mail.

Finally, I think it was very perceptive of you, Sharon, to notice that I have a narrative bent. I'm much more interested in portraiture that suggests a story or expresses a generalization than I am in stock depictions of Mrs. Pacific-Heights and Fluffy, not that there's anything wrong with that. Ah Ha! I just checked out your website. "Stephanie"!!!!!! I'm humbled.