Rachel
 

Here's one of my latest paintings:

I love this Michele. Very atmospheric and very well done!

Beautiful painting, Michele. I've followed with interest your mid-career workshop experiences - everything comes together masterfully in this piece. Brava.

Very nice. Looks like a Copley :)

The little girl seems mesmerized and so am I! Congrats, I love the colours, so warm and inviting.

Gorgeous Michele. I want to try one lit with a candle, can you talk about how you photographed this and any challenges?

Michele,

There's something about a candle that calls to artists. Years ago I had to try something very similar to this with my daughter (I'm guessing this is your daughter), it didn't turn out nearly this good.

Since you insist on posting this in the critique section I'll give you this: her left hand, as it wraps over to meet the table closest to us, the shadow line seems to abrupt. It does improve as it goes up the arm, but I'm talking about the area of the hand. To my eye this is the highest /sharpest contrast in your painting.

Wow Michelle! Is she your daughter? She is beautiful. :sunnysmil

Thanks, everyone, but aren't there some more things you would suggest I do differently, if not with this painting then for next time? I know it's not perfect and I want to improve with every painting I do.

To answer your question, Kim, I photographed my daughter with a digital camera using a tripod and a self timer to minimize camera shake. I used only the candle as a light source and I shot dozens of photos, as I always do when getting photo reference.

The trick in getting the right information to paint from was to spot meter the exposure on her face, and bracket lots of other similar exposures from there. I also photographed the candle separately, with many different exposures, and referred to some other pictures I found of candle flames that gave me even more information.

In addition, I did a small color study from life. (Yes, my daughter had to sit there AGAIN! She acted like I was asking for the moon.) Given her impatience and wiggliness I only had about fifteen minutes to do the color study, so it wasn't all that useful.

Congratulations, Michele. This is a pensive, soft and beautiful painting. I love seeing the various lighting challenges you're giving yourself, you brave soul!

Michelle,


Congratulations on a fine portrait. You did a fantastic job capturing the light from the flame to her face. Such a hard task and I'm very impressed. I am always excited when I see that you have posted a new painting. You are a hard working artist. We all know how grueling a photo session can be (I had one this weekend, knees still hurting!) and with a child and a flame, well.....my hat's off to you! I want to try this too, but will do it someday...


Thank you again for posting such a beautiful painting of a lovely little daughter!


Sincerely,

Denise

Thanks for the information Michele. That looks very challenging, I'm impressed.

Hi Michele,

The painting looks beautiful.

A few comments:
Her face (the lighter parts of the skin in general) is much too light en the little fire is too dark to make this a really convincing candle-light scene. It appears to me that her face (the lighted object) is lighter than the light-source itself, which is impossible in reality.

The highlights in the glass are very dark, they would have made nice accents and a more sparkling candle-light holder if they were painted lighter.

The transition from the shadow to the light in her (for us) right arm is too abrupt. Certain parts look quite flat and it is as if there is some sort of corner in the arm instead of the round shape it actually has.

I don't know why you made the edge of the lower part of her (for us) left arm so soft. In the source-photograph it is a nicely defined arm, it has lost some of the beautiful shape and form it had on the source-photograph. I see the same thing in the definition of her clothing. Maybe there is too much talk on this forum about lost edges. It's a pity when nice forms get lost and they become too much blurred and undefined, which happened -in my opinion- on the left side of her silhouet, in her arm.

Her (for us) left cheek is painted a little too broad.

Her (for us) right eye extends a little too much on the underside.

The original photograph showed a little bit of a window in the back. By removing this and making the background totally dark the painting gets a very lonely appearance, that's my impression. But that is also a matter of choice. The window would have given you an opportunity to define her silhouet better.

The colour of her skin looks a bit unnatural to me, as if there isn't enough colour. In candle-light the colours become more reddish. These skin-colours seem too cool to me to be convincing.

I miss something in the typical form of her cheek on the right side. The form is too much simplified and she lost a bit of her typical expression. Maybe there should be a thread on this forum in which someone explains something about the muscle-tissue underneath the skin of the face and how it has an effect on the appearance of the face in the expressions we want to give our subjects. When you know what's underneath the surface one can paint the surface more convincing and more subtle.

In the design of the candle the form or the design of the candle could be a little more elegant. The candle wax that typically drips from the candle gives nices opportunities to make the forms richer. You could have placed the candle at a certain angle in the candle-light holder, so it would have created a certain movement or dynamic in the composition, which could have balanced/ have a realtion for example with the angle of her (for us) left arm.

The little part of her hand under her chin which shows reflected light looks a little bit too large to me, just a little bit.

It seems to me that the left corner of her (for us) left eye is a bit too liniar. Not soft enough when comared to the source-photograph (although I don't have a large photograph of her face to really compare.) The form is too sharp there, I think.

In the source-photograph there are some dark shadows in her clothing which I don't see in the painting. I think they would have worked fine if they had been there in defining the forms better.

Her right-arm looks a bit too large to me, maybe it's because it is painted a bit larger, it may also be that the shadow doesn't extend enough on the arm, especially at the elbow.

For some reason you changed the form of the shadow of her left arm on her dlothing into a vertical form. There is a certain playfulness in the shape of that shadow in the original photograph which I miss here.

I attached a digitally manipulated image of your painting in which I changed a bit in the relation of the candle-light and her face and added some highlights in the candle.

The painting has a beautiful and soft atmosphere which makes me forget all my own previous, nit-picking comments!

Michele, I think it's a lovely painting, and my daughter is also Asian - she's Korean.

My only suggestion might be to add a little more definition to her right nostril, on our left. As it is it seems to become lost in her cheek and it probably makes it look flatter than it really is. I notice that there's plenty of definition on that side of her lips.

Beautiful mood here!

Leslie

Peter, the main reason I didn't make the candle flame brighter is that I wanted it to be a secondary focal point, not the main one. Thanks for all the input!

I may have mentioned this before, but when I was at the Rembrandt exhibit last year, I noticed, in one painting, that there was a fire that emitted no light at all. It may have been there as symbolism, but the Great One did not feel bound by the laws of physics. He put the light where he deemed best. The light seemed to come from the figures themselves (of course, this was the Holy Family, but the effect read as very realistic, and it was an excellent compositional device).

Michele - I understand, but in that case I would have tried to hide the little flame behind something else. I explained this in this thread:
http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...?t=3086&page=3

Michele

It

Michele,

This is the candlelight painting I mentioned to your earlier by former client Jerry Yang. Sorry I don't have it in a larger size.

Oh, yes, I've seen that one before. I think it was this painting that inspired me to do a portrait by candlelight in the first place. It's gorgeous!

Soft and lovely, Michele. You have captured a beautiful moment. Don't tell me that there aren't some teeth gritting moments working with kids which you have managed not to show !

Even 15 minutes from life is important to get that color reference, you can observe what the camera has left out.

Sincerely,

Just
I heard
God said
Let there be light
Then, there is life
More light is more life
Rachel
Your mother is your light
You are her life!

I'm surprised I missed this one. Absolutely beautiful, and I agree with Jeff about the light source. I also see it being more important that she is the focal point. I believe you have easily surpassed the piece that inspired you.

I've made some changes (moved candle reflection, changed relative brightness of sides of face so left side doesn't come too far forward as it used to, etc.)