"Heather"
 

This drawing was done on a grey green heavy paper with black and blue soft pastels. The size is approximately 12 x 15. I am still making adjustments but would appreciate any comments.

close up ...

On a run-through here, Mike, and will return, but on first glimpse my eye caught the horizontal line of the base of the nose. The nostril on our left is higher than the right. The line is out of parallel with the horizontals of the eyes and mouth. (Of course, if that's the way it appears in nature, Well Done! But I suspect that what's happened is something that can sneak up on you when a figure's head is slightly tilted. We have a tendency to Ouija-board the features into the horizontal level we "expect" to see when we view a face.)

"Ouija-board the features" is a technical term of art that is new and may not yet appear in the texts.

Steven,

I think my sin is that the nostril on our right is too low.

Then there's the matter of my floppy arms, which I am still trying to resolve. The whole arm thing looks pretty bad at this point.

I'll post the photo here ...

I think it may be because of the strong light on the arms I could never see them as flattering.

I would also consider the following cop out crop.

Yunno nothing sharpens your eye like bringing these things out into the public.

I've reshaped the the contour of the underside of her arms. Brought the dark value under her left forearm and hand way up so that the arm and hand don't look like they're floating. (I think I was scared of the very light value at the bottom right so naturally I over compensated, a mid-value works pretty well.) I've reclaimed some of the bottom of her right arm as it exits the sleeve. And I've shortened and reshaped her fingers.

She looks better already. Am I allowed to critique myself?

I'm still working with a film camera so I'll wait to see what else can be corrected before I make another photo.

Hi Mike,

The likeness is there. There are just some details to fix and I am confident that you are on the right track.

I like the version without the hands because the reference photo on the hands is not that great. It is hard to figure out the edges on the fingers.

Critiquing your our work I find works well after you take a break off the work. And you have the best seat in the house!

PS. I would also recommend not to use a really heavy and rough paper. Charcoal is hard enough medium to control. :)

Josef,

I recently spent 30 min. in front of all the different papers at the art store pulling and feeling and reading their names. I finally selected this gray green (which doesn't come through in the post). It is very heavy but it's not rough. What aggravates me is that I don't remember what the name of the paper is.

I have been taking my paper to my local framer who has some kind of machine which attaches the paper very permanently to a piece of half inch foam board. It makes it pretty easy to set up on my easel. However, I read in other threads that it might not be so good for the paper to be directly touching the foam board. Ah hum.

This has been done with soft pastels only. As I mentioned above I have been working on the arms and hands trying to get their correct shape and also trying to reduce them in value as not to over power. I am going to try and finish it with the hands. The cop out crop will always be an option.

Mike,
 

I just sketched your model on a piece of paper on my desk with careful measuring and gained a quick likeness. My eyes, nose, and mouth looks just like yours. What is different is the value of my shadows. Mine are darker and yours lighter. Recreating a model's (female) makeup will reflect her likeness in a keen way. Just as the shadows of lashes and lids do on a male model. Apart from all the little line differences, I'd adjust the shadowing.

Great work and a good challenging photo.

Morris,

Donde esta frijole cabrito? If you can translate that you get the golden tamale.

This is always my challenge, getting dark enough. Along with the above mentioned changes I have been trying to work some deeper values into the shadows of her face.

Long time no hear from, thanks for the reminder.

Mike,

Good likeness. I'd maybe think about darkening the background more like the reference. What swings about the photo, to me, is the light on the face and hands emerging from the (relatively) uniform tone of the overall. That drama of light gets lost with a lighter background. Also, since the eye goes first to the place of greatest contrast, my eye gets more involved with the contrast between the background and the blouse than with the face. Darkening the backgound would bring me up to her face, where you want me to look first.

Tom,

Here is a version with a darker background and some of the modifications mentioned above.

These images are not so good but they should serve well enough.

A practice session in critique...
 

Mike,

I don't consider myself qualified to critique your work, and I hope you won't shoot me straight down for writing this.

I would like to offer my observations as a practice session in critique, and I hope you will view them in that light. If by chance I should spot some small flaw that you were unaware of (as if!), I would gladly accept a 'well done,' which I will frame and hang next to my computer screen.

I find a powerful tool for self-critique is sizing the reference the same as my work, and placing them side by side on my screen. This encourages the flaws to reveal themselves.

I've taken the liberty to resize your images thusly - I hope you forgive me. I resized them accurately by measuring the exact distance from the outer edges of the irises. I found the features were placed very accurately.

As someone said, the likeness is there, and many clients would be more than delighted with it. But if it is to hang in the Louvre, a stiffer test will probably be applied. So I will look for flaws.

1) The first that reveals itself to me is that the heighth of the face appears short. This isn't true, but is an illusion caused by the way the chin is rendered in the drawing. In the photo, the model's chin is up, and you can see the underside of it - not so the drawing. I believe you could shade in the fatty area below the lower mandible toward the throat to resolve the problem.

2) To my view, the nostril on our right appears larger and should be made to recede more by darkening. Also, it appears to be lower, but this may be resolved by correcting the size issue.

3) Judging from the photo, this model takes a great deal of pride in her eyebrows. They appear carefully groomed and arched, while in the drawing, they look like simple curves drawn on a flattish surface. The more obvious problem is the one on our left, which in the photo, starts lower and remains straight and wide, then as it advances over the ridge of the brow, it narrows and curves downward as it recedes toward the hair.

4) The fatty area just under the upper edge of the eye socket on our left is also lacking information. As it stands, the eye appears to sit flush with the eyebrow above it. If you were to shade it more heavily where it meets the eyelid, it will recede 1/4" and be just where it should be. The right eye will benefit from a similar treatment, although it is less obvious.

5) The hair can be a tricky test of our skills, even a simple style like this one. I find I must treat each lock of hair as a separate entity, and you may have to resort to this approach as well. I'll address only the one on our left at the front. In the photo, it advances slightly up and away from the forehead, then as it falls to the level of the cheekbone, it recedes toward the shoulder, and is nearly horizontal where it is cut. Since it's curving directly away from us, we can't draw it as a curve - must describe it with shading. The more it curves away, the darker the shading. I believe similar treatment of the rest of the hair will result in a very attractive painting.

I will post this now, and in the morning I will probably ask myself who I thought I was, giving advice to my betters. Then I'll delete the whole thing and hope nobody noticed.

If you should read this before I recognise my own folly, I hope you forgive me for practicing my critique skills on you.

Respectfully,

Will

Mike,

I like the darker background a lot, recaptures some of the drama of light for me. Hands are worlds better, too. Nice job.

First I have to explain to Morris about my pigeon spanish.

"Donde esta frijole cabrito?", translates to: "Where you bean kid?" Thinking you should come around more often.

Will,

You must be a late sleeper! I think your critique is at least as good as my painting.

About #1, This was a conscious attempt to give her a more flattering chin. Heather, although she has a beautiful face, has a bit of a saggy chin. This has been a question that has come up before on this forum as to whether we should make these little cosmetic adjustments. In this case I felt like the fault was partly mine because I selected the angle of the camera and had I been a little sharper I could have avoided showing the sag. After I made my attempt at the correction I felt like her likeness didn't suffer so I left it.

About #2, I don't have a very compeling excuse regarding the nose. I have worked it several times and it seems that even a very subtle misalignment can show to be a problem. One thing that I think exacerbates this is the fact that I have tried to keep everything very soft and avoid any hard edges. I think this makes it harder to exactly delineate fine details. Also the way the light has worked around the nose it has given one of those unnatural looks. I didn't know how to get around that.

About #3 and #4, I can see your point here and will take another look at those areas above her eyes.

About #5, I was pleased with her hair until I began to change the background. I then began to pick at it and now have it overworked. I think this is a hazard of reworking the background as I did. I like to do the hair in conjuction with the background to created the kind of edges that I like. I think it could have been ok, I just went to far. I'm now having trouble pulling out with my eraser.

As the one newly wed said to the other... we shall practice on each other.

Mike
 

I've been around. I always check the forum every day or two. I just haven't been posting much. Actually, I've been searching for some files I have of several charcoal studies. I'll post them and let you guys go at them. I, like some of the others, am a little apprehensive to critique works that, in most cases, are much better than my own.

I'll try to chime in here and there to let you know I'm still kicking. Thanks for the notice.

M.

This image is off to the framer. I felt like I should post the final image to complete the exercise. Thanks for all the good help that I received on this and other projects.

face detail ...

Nice job on this, Mike. I thought you said it was pastel. Joseph confused me when he mentioned charcoal. I like smooth paper for pastel, but coarse paper for vine charcoal, unless I am doing fine detail, in which case I prefer smooth paper for vine charcoal.

The background adds alot. I always have trouble deciding on backgrounds. You sure can ruin a perfectly good drawing by making the wrong decision on a background!

Thanks Lon,

It is pastel on a ralatively smooth heavy paper which began as a grey green. I'm sorry the name of the paper escapes me.

I placed this in this category instead of the pastels because it was my judgement that because I used no color for flesh tones that this would fall more into the drawing category.

It was Tom E. who brought me back on the background. The photo offered a good background of value and contrast. When you try and paint what you cannot see you begin to take risks.

Also, it was Chris Saper's drawings presented by Wm. W. that inspired me (notice the blue black) to begin this project. I had intended to try and create very very loose rendition as Chris had done. I admire that (her) style very much and some day I will give myself permission to follow through. This ended up as a compromise to my portfolio.

Thanks again to all.