Unsure of next move. Help!

Richard Monro · 09-11-2005, 08:35 PM

Janet,

I like the the painting and the background a lot. Here are some additional suggestions for tweaking it:

1) Lighten the highlights in her hair to increase value range and modeling and give the painting some pop. The reference photo indicates these should be the lightest part of your painting.

2) The pouching under her right eye is too accentuated. Soften the value range here to de-emphasize. Unless she had a bad night on the town, she is too young to have that problem in her face.

3) Bring the gray in the sky down to her right shoulder to allow the highlight there to work and to pull her into the foreground.

i like the improvements in your painting skills that are showing up here. Keep up the good work.

Kimberly Dow · 09-11-2005, 11:26 PM

Youve got a lovely start here.

I know Im not answering your asked questions, but...

her overall skin is warm and brown/tan. You need to search out and find some cools for her skin to be more believeable. The photo you have posted shows her skin as much cooler than you have it painted, but it could be my screen. Even if it didn't - some cools in there would add an awful lot to this painting.

Brenda Ellis · 09-12-2005, 12:08 AM

I'm not sure where the line is between figurative and portrait, either, Janet.

I think this is a portrait simply because the painting is so clearly "about" this woman. Her personality, what she might be thinking, her mood.

I am remembering a painting of Charles Dickens by R.W. Buss, titled "Dickens' Dream". It is certainly a portrait but the figure of Dickens is relatively small and asleep. The rest of the painting (unfinished) is an entire wall of character depictions from Dickens' stories.

I don't know what they teach folks in art school about the difference between the two. Manet's painting of the woman behind the bar, in which reflected in the mirror is a whole room full of people. Portrait or figurative? Maybe it is for the artist to say whether his/her work is a portrait or not.

Janet Kimantas · 09-12-2005, 08:05 AM

Thanks guys!

I know what my next few moves are, at any rate. Kimberly, you are right about the cools in the skin, it is something that is a real challenge for me. Since the ambient light is from a big blue sky, that's where I think I will concentrate. Richard, thanks for noticing any improvement I might have made - it's all due to this forum, I'm sure. Brenda, I'm going to call this a portrait, then. Glad that's solved.

Janet

Janet Kimantas · 09-17-2005, 02:19 PM

Here she is again. I've tried to incorporate all the suggestions the best I could. The question now is, should I call this painting Hope or Faith?

Thanks in advance for looking in.

Janet

Richard Monro · 09-17-2005, 02:27 PM

Janet,
This has come together nicely. Lovely! My vote is for Faith.

Linda Brandon · 09-17-2005, 03:50 PM

Hi Janet,

I like the fresh painterly quality you bring to your work. Nice painting!

Here's an idea that might help you with facial proportions when you work from photos: blow up your photo (a Xeroxed black and white is fine for this purpose) to the same size as your painting. Take a clear plastic sheet and draw over the face with a black Sharpie. Use this as a template to place over your painting before every painting session. It will keep you from falling in love with an eye that is a quarter inch off which you will be loathe to move. (Tip on moving eyes: scrape the canvas down so there are absolutely no ridges before you rework it.)

The template is a pretty primitive tool but personally I am too lazy to really learn Photoshop and do photo comparisons that way. I also think this way is faster.

By far the best way to train yourself to draw something exactly is to let your eye flip back and forth from the subject to your painting. Where there is vibration is where you've made a mistake. The Sharpie template is a crutch but it will help you from going too far in a wrong direction. It also won't help you in finding values, color or volume but it will help you with placement of features. When you work from a photo your facial measurements must be exactly right or the likeness will be off.

Most artists who work primarily from photos go to a huge amount of trouble to get everything exactly the same as the photo so if you are going the photorealism route you'll have to do this process of constant remeasurement, one way or another, not only at the start of your painting but at every painting session.