Please Critique
 

Pencil/Charcoal/Conte Drawing. Any comments will be welcomed.

WOW! :thumbsup:

One thing...the point of the chin is a tad too far left and doesn't quite align with the center of the face.

I like it!
 

. . .mixing media! I like it!

I have a question for you. What kind of drawing table area did you use for this drawing? Was it done on a flat table? It appears that you drew it on a flat table top, as there seems to be slight distortion as if you had the pad off to your right, causing your view of it to be correctly proportioned as you viewed it while drawing it, but out of proportion when you lift it up and look at it straight on.

I paint at an easel, but I always draw with my pad on a drawing table which is about 40 or 45 degrees tilt, and the center of the pad is exactly perpendicular to my line of vision. I position myself directly in front of the pad, not off to the side. Do you follow? I will add a diagram. Distortion can also happen when your subject is off to one side. In this case, I will wager that it was off to your left, tempting you to move towards the left away from the center of your drawing pad.

I seldom draw backgrounds anymore in pencil or charcoal drawings. That is because I was once accused of covering up my little messes.

Pencil artwork is hard to post in a JPEG, as it often does not show the subtlties of the strokes as thick as they are. Your style of line technique is very soft here and blended. I see very few actual lines, except for the cross hatch type shade lines in the neck and perimeter. The softness works, especially since you are using mixed media. I use a blended technique for charcoal. I like to see lines when working with pencil. I like to see how an image is expressed by lines. If you blend them away, you lose something. It is so easy to overwork a drawing, and lose the expression of the line. The more time one spends on a drawing, the less unique and individual it is. The last post was quick. This one took a bit more time, I will bet. But it works. It brings out something in the girl that is inviting. It is appealing.

I could be wrong about your table, but you get the idea. You are very talented. Keep it up!

Lon

Distortion
 

Lon, I was wondering why it was looking so funny on the screen. I must have been holding the camera at a funny angle and it stretched the face. This might clear up some things. Here it is.

Reshooting that helped a lot, Joseph, but there's still a bit of a gooseneck to the right. However, just hold your finger up to cover that vertical stripe of near-black shadow on the right (viewer's) side of the neck, so your mind automatically makes the neck wider, and instantly everything drops into place. I think you need to substantially lighten that shadow stripe, in order to optically get the neck over "under" the head.

Interesting how the hair is shown as a soft impression.

I have to say, sometimes I give the viewers of my drawings special instructions. For instance, when viewing my drawing, they need to close one eye and squint the other. After all, that is what I did when I drew it!

Lon, when giving your viewers special instructions, having them squint their eyes makes sense. But, since the portrait is no longer in three dimensional form, no unusual perspectives can occur. Maybe you have a different purpose for having them close one eye?

hi, I like it!

Did you use a photograph or did you draw this from life?

Peter

Talent
 

Joseph, I think you have a long and prosperous career ahead of you. Take the critiqes well and keep this quality of work up and you'll have no problem turning out wonderful work.

Lon, I have my viewers just close their eyes completely then imagine my work to be incredibly beautiful. It seems to work well! (grin)

Joseph, just wondering... Is she your girlfriend? Otherwise, you should ask her out immediately! ;)

Beautiful girl, nice subject to make drawings of.

Peter

Hi Joseph,

After my not-so-serieus comment some remarks about the drawing. My feeling is that on the right side (at the height of her chin) the transition, from shadow to the lighter area is a little bit too smooth. Perhaps some accents indicating hair-texture or structure wouldn't hurt. Maybe the hair can be used more as a way of making the composition stronger.

If you use some extra accents the overall appearance of the girl could be more impressive. I like the way the hair is drawn on the left side, how it falls on her shoulder.

There is something in the definition of the form of the cheeks that worries me a bit, but it's difficult to judge, without a picture of the model. Maybe it's useful to look in a book about anatomy to see how the muscles are placed, with that knowledge it's perhaps easier to place certain accents, or perhaps you can ask her to smile some more for a while, so you can see how the face is structured in the cheeks. I miss something in the definition of the cheeks. But I also have to say, that this is less the case in the second picture of the drawing you posted, but that second picture isn't really sharp, so see for yourself what you can do with this remark. Perhaps you can post a sharper picture, like the second one?

The shadow of the neck, perhaps it could be a little bit sharper, just to indicate more the distinction between the lighted en the shadowy area. I do not mean a sharp shadow, but just a little more accentuated.

The eyebrow, on the left for us, is perhaps too much of a line. Maybe you can try next time to draw the eyebrows with accents, not really clear lines, but as carefully placed accents.

Another comment about composition, perhaps the drawing could have been more balanced when you placed some dark accents below on the left-side. She is wearing a dark T-shirt (?) You could use that as a reason to place some darker accent somewhere, to make it a more balanced composition.
one last remark about the dark area in the background, perhaps it's better to extend that to the border of the paper. Now it is too much an isolated area, a compositional thing.

Perhaps I'm commenting too much on a spontaneous drawing, see for yourself what you do with these remarks.

Greetings,
Peter

I am going to post my photo-refrence. Perhaps I should have done this when I first posted. Not my girlfried. I assumed she is the girlfriend of the guy I'm doing this for. Peter, please don't feel that you are comenting too much. I am soaking up every single one of your points.

After seeing the photo, I'll have to withdraw my earlier observation. I can see now what's happening with the neck -- the hair on her right side is covering up part of the width that I was looking for.

Ignore me, too! :sunnysmil

It is interesting to see your photo reference in order to understand what is really going on with the neck in your drawing.

I think that this is a good lesson in "drawing what you know...and not necessarily what you see."

Even though the neck in the drawing is technically correct, it still doesn't "look" right.

I suggest you put the photo aside and simply "play around with it" until the neck looks "right" and you will end up with a first class drawing!

Very nice drawing Joseph!. I can't add much to the comments except to agree with them, especially the conversation about the neck. Your freind got his money's worth!
Reading the other comments pertaining to this drawing made me want to ask the forum group a strange question. Do you think that a person with only one eye would have a perspective advantage in painting, or a handicap? I know William Whitaker talked about having really bad vision in one eye, yet his paintings are beautiful. I think there was a Master or two with really bad vision too...but don't recall which. What do you think? Maybe I should have made this a poll...advantage or disadvantage?

I hereby claim intellectual property rights in the "'Artist's Perspective' Eyepatch", available in an appropriately limited palette of colours. There will be many imitators, but you owe it to your career to choose THE original. Ask for it by name.

-- An opportunist

I made the photograph lighter and then you can see that the contour of the neck was drawn by Joseph just a little too much to the left. If the contour of the neck was replaced a little to the right and perhaps the contour of the right-side of the face was a little bit adjusted (on the right side of her chin the contour seems a little too round) The placing of the head on the neck would appear more stable I think. Also the contour of her forehead could be a little bit adjusted.

Maybe the contour of the hair is a little too round too on the top of her head (towards the left)

Greetings,
Peter

Hi Joseph,

Something was bothering me about this portrait, and I just figured it out. It has nothing to do with her face which was rendered beautifully, but the angle her shoulders are. She looks kind of slumped and heavier than in the picture. With the photo and drawing side by side it seems that the angle in which the shoulders come off the neck needs some adjustment. I see lots of artists concentrate on getting the face right, then do a more "impressionistic" rendering of the neck and shoulders. That's fine, if the perspective is right, but sometimes we get a little less picky once the fun part is done. I struggle with this myself sometimes. What do you think?

Thanks for the side by side comparison Peter. I can see all of the points you have just mentioned now. The neck is quite a bit off, how'd I miss that?

Thanks for pointing out that about the shoulders Marta. If you wouldn't have mentioned that, it would have totally flown by me. She does seem slouched compared to the photo.

Joe

For what it's worth here is a quick attempt to demonstrate a few things that I thought might help your drawing. Forgive the roughness. (I have to find some way of resetting my brushes in Photoshop to avoid the hard edge cloning you will see here).

Having established my alibi, let me explain my effort. Firstly, I agreed strongly with Marta on her observation that the shoulders did not seem correct and I have to say that I am very careful to be sure that those things that contribute to the whole are often more important than the details. I also tried to make the neckline of the jersey show a more pleasing shape and appear to continue beyond and through the hair and eventually flow over the shoulder. (My eye followed this curve on our right side around to the neck in the original).

Karin's good advice to "play around with it" led to changes in the hair. I broke up and added body to the the long, flat, and continuous outline on our left and reduced the odd excess on the right. Also under the category of "play with it" and "put aside the photo" you can improve things like the neck by arbitrarily enhancing lights or darks in the hair to suggest what lies underneath (the neck). If it holds up during posting you will see a few (crude again) attempts to add darks that pick up the neck line and shoulder.

Whenever we had a live model with long hair that covered part of the neck or shoulders (and believe it or not, "Richard's" was the longest of anyone's), we'd invariably ask him or her at some point to brush the hair back and leave it for a little while, so that we could correctly place the underlying anatomical features. Then the hair could be brought back to its original "drape" and drawn or painted, in confidence that the anatomy that we could no longer see was in fact right where it belonged. Obviously if you're working from a photograph, you're constrained in this regard, which is why it's so important to do as much drawing from life as possible, even if your primary resource is photography.

Daniel Greene tells a story that I haven't figured out yet how to use, but I'm working on it. He was doing a pastel of a young woman in a long dress and he was having trouble getting her posture and gesture right, and finally he asked the woman (a professional model) if she would pose nude so that he could get the anatomy right. She did, he did, and then the dress was painted over the correct anatomy. I suspect that you'd have to be an artist of Greene's stature to pull this off, so to speak. I mention it only in passing.

Steven

Do you suppose we will ever hear the following version of Steven's story?

:) "He was doing a pastel of a dignified old judge in a long robe and he was having trouble getting his posture and gesture right, and finally he asked the judge (a professional of some stature) if he would pose nude so that he could get the anatomy right. He did, Greene did, and then the robe was painted over the correct anatomy. I suspect that you'd have to be an artist of Greene's stature to pull this off, so to speak..." :o

I suppose it depends on the judge, but that's a story somebody else is going to have to write.

Hahahahahah!
 

You guys are cracking me up. You guys are going to have to take some time off or something. I get silly when I am exhausted. :) :D :sunnysmil ;)

I have heard (lots of) other male artists tell a version of Greene's story about the young and lovely female model who must remove all of her clothing so that the male artist can "get the anatomy right."

Yeah, right...who does he think he's kidding? I hope I live long enough to hear the second version - at least once.

My story is not quite as interesting as Greene's, although it does contain an attractive young model (female), and it has the added attraction of being completely true.

I was in a class where the model was clothed in a long dress. I struggled for long hours trying to figure out what was going on under the dress, and finally asked the model to hike the dress up to her waist. When she did, a collective sigh was heard from the other artists. I have since taught all my students to ask their models to pull their hair back, pull down their collars, roll up their sleeves, and whatever is necessary to see what needs to be seen.

Karin, although the judges story has not happened to me, I have asked an attractive male model to remove his shirt....

Peggy

As far as I know, Greene's account is true as well. I was sitting about 10 feet from him when he related it, in his studio, and he was specifically referring to a pastel that to the best of my recollection was called "Queen of Kites," part of a series that he had done for a festival of some kind. He had even produced a substantial supply of fine-art reproductions of the piece (back when doing so was extremely expensive, thousands of dollars up front), which did not sell well to the general public and which he now sells for cost to students at his workshop. The story about the execution of the painting was told simply by way of his discussion of the various prints and posters available. There was no connected applied theory lab at the workshop.

I thought we agreed, Peggy, that the thing with the shirt was a one-off and that it wouldn't go any farther than your studio. Perhaps I had the wrong impression.

"Steven"

A nude study by Raphael...

Greetings,
Peter

Whilst speaking of nudes. . .
 

My grandfather often told this story of a nude model in his art school. She liked to look at the students work while on her break. The only problem - she was totally nude while doing so! My grandfather did not know what to do about it, as you might well imagine, until the next class. Before she removed her robe, he took her aside and said, "When you are posing, you are a nude. But when you are on your break, you are just a naked lady! Please wear your robe."

But . . . what was the objection?

"Confused and Sitting Alone in a House at Night" (an alias)

This discussion is going into a very different direction than the drawing of the (clothed :)) girl by Joseph, but it's really interesting. It reminds me of the Dejeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. When a naked woman is painted in the appearance of a Venus by someone like Ingres, than it's a nude and completely acceptible. When painted in company of clothed men then it becomes vulgar. It reminds me of the way that baroque painters used to paint pictures of Danae or Bathseba as an excuse to paint a female nude.

It's the context in which something is placed. I think many nudes of the past were created as erotic images in the disguise of art. Many great works of art are early pin-ups. Or could be seen like that. The Ignudi by Michelangelo for example. Or paintings of Venus by Titian. In fact, nude models in the seventeenth century often were whores. The painter/Rembrandt-pupil Govaert Flinck used to manage some kind of brothel, I read somewhere. There are paintings hanging in the great museums of the world that once were, in fact, images to attract clients for certain prostitutes.

I'm not saying that someone who is painting or drawing a nude is doing something with an erotic undertone. But Lon's example of his grandfather's words to the model are really interesting.

Greetings,
Peter

I'm sorry Joseph ;)

You show us a really nice drawing of a beautiful girl with long hair, and this discussion is all about naked women now...

Are you going to change the drawing, or was it finished already? If you're going to re-work it I hope you show us the end-result.

Greetings,
Peter

There IS a difference between "nude" and "naked" for sure.

Maybe someone should post this as a new topic? We have strayed so far from this one...

Interesting topic we have slid into. I'll have to remember that Daniel Greene trick. Ha Ha. Peter, I will relist the drawing when I get it all fixed up.

It seems that the neck could be made to look more like the photo if the shadow wasn't as dark and/or the light not as bright. In other words, maybe, try turning down the contrast.