First of three.
 

Hi everyone,

I have been doing a portrait of my daughter Camilla, while she was away for three weeks, speaking Spanish.

I took some photos of her and have been painting on three different canvases with different lighting. Two are finished and the last is close.

This painting came out a little too blue in the photo, though not much. The challenge was to paint her in the soft shadow light.

The size is 21,5"x19"

Allan

Ps. I have replaced the photo of the painting.

I have no right to critique on anything, but I can praise! I love the blue tint- making the painting dream like. The flowers are rendered so delicately, how do you do it?!

Thanks Matthew,

I appreciate your comment. Don

Second of three
 

This is another version.

Allan

Allan,

I do enjoy seeing your work, you have a soft touch and a great sense of color.

If I could offer a couple of nitpicks ... in the first image - that area between the inside corner of her right eye down to the tip of her nose seems to be a bit over modeled, mostly with the cool temperature changes.

And the angle created by the bottom of her chin, as it proceeds from our right to our left and up, this line seems to go up too abruptly and may be hurting your likeness just a bit. The area between the mouth and the bottom of the chin may also be over modeled just a bit.

And one other nit, the darkest values of the painting, in our bottom left part of the painting, keep tugging me off in that direction.

This may have been by design, but, the eyes seem a bit bright and contrasty in both images.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment, I do appreciate those daughters.

Thank you Mike for the comments.

I have replaced the photos of the paintings with better copies. Both were taken outside in full sunlight and I can not tell what I did different, but I put a gray scale at the side of the paintings so I could chek the temperature on the monitor. Now I believe that they are pretty close.

I have noted your "nitpicks" and will act on them, thanks again.

Allan

Values or tones.
 

Allan,

I think most of us would love to have this Danish beauty to paint. She is lovely.

I think you, as has been mentioned, have a lovely light touch with color. However your work suffers from a weak range of values. Squint at your photo reference and you will see what I mean. You have flattened out the tonalities, by not accurately rendering your values. You seem, except for the white to have all middle light tones, with some dark accents.

One of the most daunting tasks is to paint a back-lit head successfully. You have to paint it darker than your mind tells you to do. Since it is Summer, do some quick color studies of your daughter outside. Squint to see the values and open your eyes wide to see the color.

You have over emphasized, as Mike has pointed out the modeling of the nose. Squint again and see how much softer the nostrils are.

Thank you Sharon,

I know that I probably have a false idea about keeping the colors light and strong. This must be a bad habit from painting watercolors, but will of cause not be any excuse in portraiture.

I admire high contrasting portraits, but find it hard to do. This is something I must practice.

I am working on the third portrait of Camilla, in higher contrast, so ma by I can come over that limitation.

Thank for your frank critique, I really appreciate it.

Allan

Allan,

Somewhere in portrait hell there is someone who will shoot me for telling you this. It will help you with learning values.

Take a piece of transparent plastic. Place it over a good color print of Camilla. Mix the tones to match the values right on the photograph itself. I will help you quickly learn values. It helped me because I was also afraid of making skin-tones too dark. Mine were always so pasty.

There is a downside to this. Depending on it to much will result in photographic color and not developing your eye. It is a good jump start however on judging values. That is why I always recommend doing studies if not the whole thing from life.

Good luck!

Sharon

I will try that.

My printer is not very good so I did the paintings by printing out a gray scale photo to measure from, and looked at the monitor for the colors. It is placed on a chair just above the palette. I have build a box around the lap top so that I can see the screen even when the sun shines in the room through the skylight window, facing west, or the lamp is on in the evening/night.

Probably it would be easier with a real photo.

Allan

I have been softening the shadows, actually I have almost repainted the face.

Allan

Hi Allan! I like this version much better, it's more true to her.

Much better, Allan. Softer and richer.

Beautiful
 

Hi Allan,

Wow, this is just beautiful. And you have captured her likeness so well. This portrait seems to have a lot of feeling. And I think your background and flowers you have painted are actually prettier than the greenery in the photographs.

Joan

Thank you Ladies,

I am happy with the result for now, and will try to get the other two portraits of Camilla finished.

We are having family visiting for the next week so it may take some time before I come back with something.

I will probably be undertaking some more portraits of the family during this week, by taking some photos.

Thank you again for your help and encouragement.

Allan

These are just lovely!

Allan, I like these paintings very much. They have a convincing and fresh outdoor feel to them. And your daughter is beautiful!

A lovely work of art with an interesting blend of surface and depth!

Hi again,

This is the third portrait of Camilla. I chose this reference because of the interesting light on the eye (eyelash) and the hands.
The background was not so appealing to me, and the contrast was also a bit too dark, I think. So i invented the rest of it.

I feel that I only need to paint the jewelry now, but would like a response to help me to decide.

24" x 20" on canvas.

Allan

Very nice job. I don't think it needs the jewelry.

Kim, Linda and Michele,

Thank you and sorry for the late response to your kind remarks on these paintings.

Since these are portraits of my daughter I don

Eyes on Us
 

Dear Allan,
After being away on a sailboat for two weeks, I am just catching up on your terrific progress. My comment regards her gaze. While this has a lovely wistful feeling, I think her direct stare in the photo is more powerful and revealing of her character. Love the background!