Dear Carol,

I know that your next post will include a SUPERB photo reference! Notwithstanding the source photo commments I had just a few thoughts expanding on Garth's comments a little.

Yes, there will always be some reflected color - in both directions. The strength of the reflected color depends on many factors, - local color/ saturation; type of light; direction and strength of light, and texture of each surface. Sharing color is a very important tool in integrating the subject with the background.

Your painting has a Matisse-like feel to it, and the flatness is underscored by the figure's silhouette edges, which have uniformity. I think the areas where the color saturation is as strong along the shadow edges as on the top parts of the form also contributes to this feel. I see your sharpest edge as being the boy's right elbow against the chair, where the seam in the Teddy Bear's nose is quite strongly contrasted as well. Fortunately edges are easy to adjust (usually) when needed.

Compositionally, your decision to include the hand on our right to "stop" the eye was a sound one. I also think you have made a strong and thoughtful decision about a classic complementary color harmony!

See you soon,

Oh, boy, Chris, I'll use that litle trick on the elbow that Bill did on one of the heads in our workshop and soften the edges of that elbow. The elbow is NOT where I want the focus to be. Gosh this is a wonderful place to learn. OK, color sharing and elbow softening will be my next effort.
Thanks as always. ;)

Carol, thanks for taking the suggestions in the spirit in which they were meant! It's so much easier for the objective viewer to see things like the tilt of a head or a smaller eye, and I'm glad you didn't mind the comments. We get so wrapped up in our paintings that we miss those details while we're working on them, and then when someone points them out, or we come back to the work after an interval, they pop right out. I usually do a somewhat detailed drawing in thinned oil on the canvas before I begin to add color, and that's also a good stage for checking on angles and proportions and other relationships.

Especially when you're doing work for your own edification rather than for a commission it is possible to use a less than perfect resource, and it helps if you have a series of photos you can scavenge better parts from. But you can get away with that only after you've got some experience under your belt. Terri Ficenec just pulled it off in her skater painting, where the child's right hand was fuzzy in the reference photo but she managed to make it work anyway.

Are you going to work on this painting any more, and if so, will you share your progress? I think it's a great start.

Leslie, as scarey as it was to put that painting out there, I knew that if I didn't ASK for help, I wouldn't get it. I don't want anything to get in the way of my learning.

#1 I WILL do that detailed drawing on canvas first - with thinned oil. It can always be wiped down and redrawn.

#2 I am continuing to work on the painting to put into practice the suggestions that I received. So far, the tilt of the head that is off, is throwing everything else I am attempting to correct further off. (ex. The light between and on the cheek on the painting's left side.) Here's another big lesson: I have worked longer on this painting BECAUSE the initial drawing was off and every correction is requiring ANOTHER correction getting down to the point that the only way to correct is to do another painting or scrap it
SO, to answer your question, YES I will post it IF it doesn't look worse and NO if it is a "paint over" and I don't do another.

#3 Does anyone know if the wet sanding technique I read about in this forum DOES work on a New Traditions panel? Bill Whittaker gave a wonderful demo in one of the posts and mentioned an ABS panel or something like that but didn't directly answer Linda's question about the New Traditions panel. I have ridges in some very key places in this painting that will keep me from painting with accuracy.

Thank you again, for all your very special help, Leslie, as I not only took all the suggestions in the manner that they were intended, but am grateful for them.

Hi Carol,
I think that your drawing distortions derives from your attempt to adjust to the relatively higher format of the canvas.
Allan

Drawing distortions and relative height of canvas format
 

Allan,
First, thank you for your comment. I would like to understand it better, however. Do I understand you to mean that the canvas should have been horizontal (as it was at first start) or do you mean that I should have dropped his head furrther? I also cropped the picture in iPhoto (after the painting was well on the way, of course) where the entire elbow and part of the bear's nose, and almost all of the shorts were eliminated. I rather liked that composition better, but it was too late for that painting.

Carol,

What I meant was that you have stretched the figure in the hight but not so much in the with. That is because you have attempted to fill the canvas in the same proportions as you see on your reference photo.

If you measure on your photo, a horizontal line from the nose of Teddy the Bear and to the upper limit of the Orange Shorts you will see that they almost level.
Now, if you do the same on the canvas, you will see what I mean.

By the way, I like your painterly approach.

Allan

AHA Moments
 

Allan, It looks like I will continue to go around with my hand covering my eyes saying, "Aghhhh!" NOW I SEE! And now i understand what you are talking about and am very glad that that you answered my need for clarification. It's been one "Aha" moment after another. And, also, thank you for the compliment.

Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. I sure will work harder on that flaw. Thank you again. I feel like I have just begun to see like a baby when its vision has just begun to focus.
Appreciatively,
Carol

Carol dear,

Isn

Take heart and continue. Remember, if it were easy, it wouldn