My Teddy
 

After a steep learning curve, much help from the Mac sector, maybe, just maybe, this picture will post. If it does, I welcome and value any and all critiques.
Thanks to the whole cheering squad who tutored me in this process.
:thumbsup:

Hooray, Carol - you got it posted! Nice painting; I really like your use of light and shade in the background and in his shirt. The hair is beautifully rendered, too. I think you need more tonal variety in his skin, though, especially in the legs although the face and arm could use some too, as could the hand on our right. And although I'm sure that that's what it really looks like because his other hand is pushing up his cheek, that eye on our left is too small. Even if it means being less true to your reference I'd make it the same size, or almost the same, as the eye on our right. It's not only narrower top to bottom, but also smaller in width, which doesn't feel right.

What size is this and is it a commission? Very appealing concept.

Glad to be able to see your work!

Carol,

I really like the design of this - and I love the attitude you have so very successfully conveyed. Very nice!!

Welcome, from yet another Mac person!
 

Hi Carol,

I really like this a lot. I like the concept and the attitude and I really like the Manet-like painterliness and your use of color.

One thing that bothers me on first impression is that the boy and the Teddy seem to be floating a little. I don't fully sense their weight upon the seat cushion. Seeing how you have carefully rendered the shadows makes me question my own first impression, and I am trying to figure out what the phenomenon is behind my impression.

I think there may be several factors contributing at once. One has to do with the way the color turns so consistently blue in the shadow, and I sense you are deliberately striving for this color effect. Another factor is that the orange trousers and yellow shirt maintain full intensity right to the blue shadow edge, making what is probably an unnatural color transition, since there is no hint of warmth reflected in the shadow where the orange meets the blue. A third is that the rendering of the shadow itself suggests the boy is floating an inch above the cushion surface; perhaps there are more subtleties in your reference image as to how the intersecting shadow turns and breaks in the light.

Tweaking any one of these possible factors will probably resolve this floating issue.

I hope this helps. Again, welcome, and I look forward to seeing more of your works.

Garth

Hi Carol, glad you finally made it on the Forum!

I think that you have a strong, individual painting style and a bold color sense. If you don't get too many comments on this painting I suspect that it may be because many of us on the Forum are striving for photographic realism, classical realism, or Sargentesque bravura painterly realism. (Have I forgotten any 'isms? here?) It is sometimes hard to cross over into another style when it comes to articulating thoughts about a painting. You lean toward Impressionism here and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Remember that the Critiques section is for nitpicking - lots of opinionated artists out here - and the Unveilings sections is for when you just want to display.

I like this pose but I agree with Garth that he appears to be floating in his surroundings. I would also like that bear to be squishier with more of a feeling of relaxed droopiness.

Photo reference for "Teddy"
 

Thank you Garth, Jane, Leslie and Linda for taking the time to critique. ALL of the observations will be of help with this painting. I have tried to include the photo reference from which I painted and if it doesn't show up,I'll keep working on that part of posting. I selected that particular shot to paint because it really, REALLY expresses a darling little boy WITH a whole lot of "attitude". I also tried to make his painting look a little "sweeter" than the foto (as it will go in his room...maybe..if I give it to him) but perhaps the "sweetening" undermines the original. I posted the source so that you could see his eyes. From viewing the photo, Leslie, would you still enlarge the eye beside the hand? I will experiment with that and see of it comes across better.

Garth, you are so right about the shadow. The fact is that I don't know how to do it differently. Would you follow the contour of the shirt and shorts, mix some yellow reflected into the shadow beside the shirt and orange into the shadow color beside the shorts? My photo was a candid shot so that is what I had to work with. I also obviously added the hand. I will work further on the shirt color turning into the shadow, too.

Linda, I swear I didn't mean to create an impressionistic "impression". I, too, work toward realism. Chris's class was my first portrait class and Bill's my second. What I had tried to do here was to create lost edges in the chair. Perhaps the color choice should be changed to a more neutral brown. That wouldn't be hard. ALSO, I so appreciate the nitpicking part in the Critiques secton as that is the only way I will learn how to correct my errors. I don't have a reason yet to use the Unveiling section at this stage. Getting all of this help from such experts is the greatest of all gifts. No ego has been EARNED yet, so it can hardly get discouraged by helpful comments. My whole goal - and I am a serious and focused learner - is to paint beautiful, realistic, portraits that appear to be candid - not formal - capturing a "moment in time". Is this the right place to post a painting of this nature? Should I be doing this in WetCanvas instead? I DO love Sergent but ALSO love Sergei Bongart. OH, and I do love the idea of squishing the bear a bit. Would you do that by making him furrier?

Carol, now that I see the reference photo I admire your treatment of the background and the shirt even more. I love the way you've pushed the darks and lights on that t-shirt. I still think the eye on our left needs to be open a bit more, and also to be wider along the horizontal axis. You lessened the distortion of his mouth as the hand affects the flesh, and similarly you should lessen the distortion of the eye even more than you already have. If you'll notice, even though it's narrowed due to the way the hand pushes his cheek up, that eye and eyebrow are still level relative to the top of his head. You've tilted the head in the painting more than it's tilted in the reference photo, but you still need to draw a line showing the tilt of the head and have the imaginary line that goes through both eyes conform to that plane.

Also, in the reference photo notice the shadow that the edge of the shorts casts on the thigh of his upper leg, and the shadow which defines the long muscle of his thigh on the lower leg. They would also give him a little more solidity. And on his arm and temple, to our left, there is a band of lighter color reflecting the light that hits that side. You've suggested it on the arm but not the temple.

I'm wondering whether making that added hand a little larger would make it a little more believable? Or get someone else to assume that pose and see how much hand would show and at what angle.

I like the blue of the chair but am finding the orange of the shorts a bit strong, both in the reference photo and the painting. Maybe bringing more blue into the shorts would tone them down and tie them together.

As Linda said, we can get very nitpicky in the critiques section, but on the whole this is a charming piece and I really like it. I too try to pull off candid-looking paintings when I can, so I can appreciate your goal here. I'm looking forward to seeing the completed version of this painting, and more of your work as you post it.

Carol,

I love the attitude you captured in your photo, and I think you've captured that same attitude in your painting. I think you are improving the imagery beyond the photo in your painting, but as a resource the photo has some limitations, which is forcing you to invent a way to model the forms more dimensionally. Evidently your camera utilized its flash, in taking this photo. The flash is great for recording the local color, but it absolutely kills the forms! Now I understand why you are unsure how to improve the shadows. There essentially are no shadows! You have had to make them up.

I bet if you soften the contrast in the shadow on the seat cushion under your boy and the Teddy, bringing some more hint of the green upholstery lapping up closer to the most protruding edges of the orange shorts and the Teddy's foot, it will resolve the floating effect. In effect you will be flattening the contrast slightly to be a little more in keeping with the absence of contrast in the photo.

When you work with a flash photo reference, it is almost impossible to discern the nuances of form you need to interpret. Having a pattern on the chair upholstery further masks the forms in the photo. Considering the flattening in the photo, I think you have done remarkably well with your painting interpretation. If you can over-ride the flash, and turn it off in the future, you may make things a little easier for yourself when you paint. On the other hand you may need a tripod to steady the camera without a flash. In a pinch, I know it is better to capture the fleeting moment, flash or no flash. There may not be an opportunity to grab the tripod. I personally cannot produce a good portrait from a flash photo; I cannot get rid of the flattening in my painting.

Garth

Carol, this is a terribly hard photo from which to work - as Garth says, it looks like a flash photo and you have no shadows to define volume. If you want to paint 'form and volume' portraits you should read the excellent posts on photographing your subject on the Forum.

Of course you can post casual portraits here on the Forum, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't spend a great deal of time composing and lighting your subject so that you have a much better chance of executing a good painting. Paintings done from casual flash snapshots have a slim chance of success, in my opinion. You have a good strong painting style, so give yourself a break and get better resource material - your paintings will be much better and they will be easier to paint because you will be able to see where you want to take your painting.

As far as the bear goes, it looks pretty stiff in the photo. If I were painting this, I'd pummel it until it looked droopy enough for my taste, and reshoot the whole photo.

Ruthless!

Leslie, Garth and Linda and all the computer helpers,

Well, your invaluable instruction has really made an impact: THE PHOTO REFERENCE must give the information necessary to make a strong, successful painting. I GOT IT!!! Finally. I got it. Chris Saper emphasized that point more times than I can count in her class but...I kept thinking (to myself, of course), that I would be able make those "funny fotos" work. And, further more, it appears, quality painters don't work with poor photos either. With only two portrait classes, an anatomy class and a couple of still life classes at Scottsdale Artists' School, in the period of one year, I also didn't have the depth of knowledge to make it all up. I have read that learning is "... just a matter of changing one's mind." Well, I HAVE changed my mind...a lot and with this one posting. Must be my art adolescence that created the need for so much repetition.

Leslie, the other advice that helped was your emphasis on the importance of drawing accuracy. I was shocked when you said that I had tilted the head more than is shown in the photo??? "What?" I said. "Let's go back and look at THAT again!" Lo and behold... I sure had. Bill Whitaker spent two whole days on drawing correctness in his 2004 workshop.

Well, LOTS to work on. And that gut hunger that I feel, my patient mentors, is what creates this unquenchable thirst for improvement. I WILL be back.

:o

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

Good point, Allan, and something I hadn't noticed. But whether or not Carol meant to make that change, I think it works a lot better that way. I prefer his not being so slouched over; there's more grace in his pose the way she painted it. Serendipity, perhaps. Or an unconscious effort to portray him sitting up straighter because he looks nicer like that.

My Teddy revised
 

It's been some time since I first posted in this section. Appreciatively, I followed as many of the suggestions as possible for this painting other than doing the impossible which was to retake the photograph. I learned and learned some more from the artists who offered such valuable tips. Hopefully, you all can see some differences in the reworked version of My Teddy. There will be a difference in paintings to come. I really hesitated to post this image, however, Chris Saper suggested that I do so and after all the help received, I felt it only fair to let you all know that your help was not for naught. I know that I have a life time of learning ahead before reaching the level of what I view on this wonderful forum.

Hopefully, I was successful at posting the image as there is a memory gap for this skill, also.

Thankfully yours,
Carol

My Teddy revised
 

If at first you don't succeed...

Carol, I think that looks terrific. Thanks for posting it for us to see. His face is so much more appealing with the change you made in the eye, and the rest of him fits in better with his surroundings because of the reflected light on his clothing and the cushions. Brava!

Looking forward to seeing your next one.

Thank you so much, Leslie. As you may have surmised, I really felt hesitant to post the picture again as I could see all of its flaws on a grand scale. That is why it didn't appear until now. So many of you experts took the time to help that I didn't want anyone to feel that their time was wasted because it certainly was logged away and put into practice. I do hope that the changes are evident, even though the colors are a bit more washed out than the real thing. I also took out a hunk of the yellow T shirt from beneath his trunks. Oh, and surprisingly enough, it has brought interest in several commissions of children about the same age. I will know more soon. :sunnysmil